Uno Platform, a framework for building native mobile, desktop, and WebAssembly apps with C# and XAML, released a new version of the Visual Studio Code extension. The new version adds support for building mobile applications as well as debugging them directly from Visual Studio Code.
.NET developers using Uno can now build, run and debug mobile apps directly from Visual Studio Code. Debugging support includes all the features that are available in Visual Studio such as setting a breakpoint, conditional breakpoint, or breaking on an exception. The extension also supports printing messages without actually breaking into the debugger and inspecting variables. Developers can use these features in their code and also in third-party code using SourceLink or sources embedded in the PDB files.
Since Uno Platform applications and .NET MAUI applications are built on the same .NET foundation, developers can use the Uno Platform extension to build and debug .NET MAUI projects too.
Apart from debugging, the extension also provides code competition and Hot Reload for XAML while Hot Reload for C# is expected in upcoming releases. These features are available for all types of projects and targets that the Uno Platform supports. Furthermore, if a developer uses an OS that doesn’t support the target they are building for, they can connect to a remote instance of Visual Studio Code and run the project there. For example, Windows or Linux developers can debug an iOS or Mac application running on a remote macOS machine.
Debugging mobile projects was a highly requested feature by the community, which enthusiastically received the announcement of mobile debugging. On Twitter, the announcement tweet received more than 200 likes and positive comments. Microsoft senior content dev Alvin Ashcraft said: "That's awesome! I can't wait to test drive it."
The Reddit .NET community shared the sentiment. User pinedax shared their experience using the extension: "In case anyone is wondering, it also works from Linux."
The positive attitude towards the Uno extension is reflected in the score of the extension at the Visual Studio Marketplace where the extension has more than 10,000 downloads.
The Uno Platform is open-source while the Visual Studio Code extension is free, but closed-source. The Uno team calls on developers to test the new features and share feedback on GitHub.