NEWS
Congrats to @tomaspetricek @ovatsus and @dsyme for their distinguished paper award on FSharp.Data
twitter.com
Preview 3, Cycle 8 now available in the Alpha channel
In previous releases, Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll would P/Invoke into the OS-provided /system/lib/libsqlite.so native library. Starting with Android N, Android will no longer permit this behaviour, so previous versions of Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll will throw a DllNotFoundException when attempting to use SQLite functionality when executing on Android N.
Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll will now bundle and distribute a custom SQLite, named libsqlite3_xamarin.so, which will automatically be bundled into the app.apk when Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll is referenced.
Existing users of Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll need only rebuild their app.
However, if any other assembly is P/Invoking sqlite, sqlite3, or variations thereof, these SQLite uses will not be updated. Those other assemblies will need to be updated. For example, SQLitePCL.raw 0.6.0 will not work on Android N, while the updated SQLitePCL.raw 0.8.6 has been updated to distribute its own copy of SQLite, and will work on Android N.
xamarin.com
Xamarin.Android preview 3 for Android N released
While this build does support the final API 24 SDK, it will not be the final build of Xamarin for Android N as the team has a few more changes that need finishing before the build can be pushed to the Stable channel.
xamarin.com
Xamarin Asset Previewer for Monogame/UrhoSharp now available
Xamarin has developed a plug-in for both Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio that provides live previews of various Monogame/UrhoSharp assets in the IDE. Until now, to preview them, developers had to use an external tool to browse them.
tirania.org
DEVOPS
Announcing Cake.AppleSimulator
A CakeBuild addin for managing (simctl) Apple iOS/watchOS/TV simulators is now available via NuGet or GitHub.
ghuntley.com
WINDOWS UNIVERSAL
XAMARIN FORMS
Implementing custom fonts in Xamarin Forms using the Effects API
Ravi discovered that the Xamarin documentation needs updating now that Xamarin Forms v2.3 is out and there's now a better way to use custom fonts within your application. By using the Effects API, it removes the need to create a new custom control for every small platform specific change required to the control.
err2solution.com
REACTIVEUI
A sensible intro to Functional Reactive Programming
People keep asking what functional reactive programming is all about. Too often descriptions of FRP fall into extremes of sterile definitions or sentimental hand-waving. In this lecture Tikhon Jelvis explains the subject sensibly, giving a careful definition while bringing it to life with an example application written in Haskell.
begriffs.com
.NET
.NET support and versioning
Long Term Support (LTS) and Fast Track Support (FTS) are concepts in use throughout the software world and should be familiar to many. LTS releases will be maintained for stability over their lifecycle, receiving fixes for important issues and security fixes. New feature work and additional bug fixes will take place in FTS releases. From a support perspective, these release trains have the following support lifecycle attributes.
LTS releases are:
- Supported for three years after the general availability date of a LTS release
- And one year after the general availability of a subsequent LTS release
FTS releases are:
- Supported within the same three-year window as the parent LTS release
- And three months after the general availability of a subsequent FTS release
- And one year after the general availability of a subsequent LTS release
Organizing your project to support .NET Framework and .NET Core
This article from Microsoft demonstrates several options to project owners how to organise their solution structure to compile against .NET Framework and .NET Core side-by-side.
microsoft.com
FSHARP
A peek into F# 4.1
In this community driven release, Microsoft partnered with the F# community and other groups at Microsoft, to ensure that F# 4.1 support is rolled out across the very wide range of tooling from day #1.
In particular:
- The Xamarin team at Microsoft are actively incorporating F# 4.1 support into the F# support in Xamarin Studio.
- The Mono packaging team is updating the packages available to include F# 4.1.
- The F# community is integrating F# 4.1 support in the F# Compiler Service component, used by many editing and compilation tools.
- Microsoft are working with the F# community to help update the F# support in the Visual F# Power Tools and ensure it works smoothly with the next release of Visual Studio.
- The F# community are already actively integrating support for F# 4.1 into support for Visual Studio Code and Atom through the Ionide project.
- The F# community are integrating support for F# 4.1 into many other tools, include Fable, a F# to ECMAScript transpiler, and into the F# support for Emacs and Vim.