DEV Community: Nikita Romanov

.NET Meteor Update - New Level of Productivity for .NET MAUI in VS Code

Nikita Romanov — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 08:16:44 +0000

Hi .NET MAUI developers!

I've been working with .NET MAUI since its initial preview versions and given the necessity to target both Android and iOS devices, I used Mac. At that time, Visual Studio for Mac was in the preview stage, so I decided to use VS Code and created an extension that helped me and my team build and debug .NET MAUI projects (yes, it was even before VS for Mac retirement). It became a lifesaver for me, so I published the extension as an open-source project - that's how .NET Meteor was born.

It was a great pleasure to see that many MAUI developers started using it and sharing their positive feedback with me (If you don't know what .NET Meteor is, please take a look at my first blog post outlining its main features). Your positive feedback motivates me, and I continue to enhance .NET Meteor. In this blog post, I'll list new exciting features that hopefully will help you create even better MAUI apps :)

Enhanced XAML Hot Reload

If you are a .NET Meteor user, you know that it supports XAML Hot Reload. I enhanced its mechanism to support even more usage scenarios than Visual Studio (for Windows or Mac). Just keep the app running and continue editing your XAML to save your time for building and running the application.

Performance & Memory Profiling (Trace, GCDump)

Starting with version 4.0, .NET Meteor can profile .NET applications with integrated .NET Diagnostics tools. You can use two profiling modes: - Trace to find performance bottlenecks. - GCDump to find memory leaks (as you may know, they cause performance issues, too).

Here is a good article from my friend Alex at DevExpress: How to Profile .NET MAUI Applications and Isolate Performance-Related Issues. The blog post provides a step-by-step guide to profile and analyze your .NET MAUI app. Alex promised to publish another blog post about memory leaks, so stay tuned :)

Functional Breakpoints

.NET Meteor supports already supported Conditional breakpoints, HitPoints, and LogPoints. Now you can use Functional breakpoints as well. Simply write a full method name and .NET Meteor will pause the application when this method is called. Moreover, you can set a condition or hit count to the functional breakpoint.

We at DevExpress like to use this feature to find a method in the MAUI GitHub repository: it's sufficient to write its name and once the breakpoint is hit, you can debug the method. Since .NET Meteor downloads the source code via SourceLink, this becomes really straightforward.

Breakpoints Bound Status

The new .NET Meteor version comes with enhanced breakpoint status visualization. It helps you determine that the breakpoint has been properly bound to the source code. Initially, breakpoints have an "Unbound" status (outlined in a transparent style in the VSCode window). When the Mono Runtime sets a breakpoint in the source code, you will see that the breakpoint will change its status to "Bound" (normal red style in the VSCode window).

Debug Console Completion Items

As you may know, you can use the Watch window to evaluate expressions during debugging. Now you can additionally evaluate expressions in the VSCode Debug Console. The console has a completion item support when you type into it and .NET Meteor supports this feature as well. Note that along with public members, .NET Meteor displays private, protected, and internal members of your types.

Tip: you can use the ''!" filter string in the Debug Console window to hide all debug log messages.

Integration with DotRush

I didn't stop at Meteor and created another VS Code extension for an even better development experience - DotRush. My VS Code turned into a fully functional IDE, and I welcome you to try this extension as well. DotRush is a lightweight C# language server for VSCode. Actually, it's an analog of the standard C# DevKit, but it comes with some advanced capabilities. I will create a blog post about DotRush later, for now, you can learn what features it offers in the GitHub repository description.

When DotRush is used, .NET Meteor gets additional capabilities. For example, normally you cannot evaluate the Application.Current.MainPage, because .NET Meteor doesn't know about the Application type. However, when DotRush is used, .NET Meteor can ask it about unknown types and get all information for expression evaluation.

Conclusion

The .NET Meteor and DotRush extension will help you focus on your app tasks by assisting you during development. Both extensions are open source and I really appreciate your feedback made through GitHub issues. Of course, if someone of you decides to collaborate on the codebase, I will be happy to consider your pull request.

If you like my projects, you may also want to check out the free .NET MAUI controls I'm working on as part of the DevExpress team: Free .NET MAUI Controls. I know that we can make MAUI great together!

Boost .NET MAUI Development Productivity: 6 Powerful Features of .NET Meteor for VS Code in Windows, Mac & Linux

Nikita Romanov — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 15:48:13 +0000

Introduction

Are you looking for a development environment for .NET MAUI applications that works seamlessly Mac, Windows or Linux? Look no further! In this blog post, I will introduce you to an easy and efficient way to develop .NET MAUI apps using VS Code and a single, free extension called .NET Meteor. It enables you to:

Debug on emulators and devices
Get basic XAML IntelliSense assistance
Work with multiple folders in workspaces
Add column (inline) breakpoints
Customize breakpoints (conditional breakpoints, log-points, hit-points)
Download and debug source code

Before we dive into the details, allow me to introduce myself briefly.

As a developer who is passionate about enriching the .NET MAUI community, I created this extension for developers such as myself, to create applications faster and easier. As my primary job, I am part of the DevExpress team, where I focus on creating free .NET MAUI mobile components. While the MAUI platform is still young and has room for improvements, I really love it, because it allows me to create fantastic and performant multi-platform applications.

VS Code vs Visual Studio for Mac

While Visual Studio is a powerful IDE for developing MAUI applications, the version for Mac OS was released not so long ago and sometimes I feel that it behaves a little unexpectedly for me. That’s why I chose VS Code as my primary IDE, and I’m quite happy with this choice as VS Code is simple and fast. Of course, at first I missed some Visual Studio features, but after that I created .NET Meteor :) Now it contains even some extra functionality that doesn’t exist in Visual Studio.

So, let's dive in and see how you can make the most out of this powerful development environment. I will demonstrate you extension features and some use-cases of how we at DevExpress use them.

Basic XAML IntelliSense

.NET Meteor assists you with XAML writing and includes basic IntelliSense support.

Elements available in your application including those from custom namespaces.
Attributes, including attached properties, such as Grid.Row.
Enums and structures such as VerticalOptions, HorizontalOptions etc.
Basic syntax support and XAML error highlighting.

Note that you need to build your project first (for any platform) to enable all .NET Meteor IntelliSense functionality.

Multiple Folders in Workspace

.NET Meteor allows you to work with several folders in your workspace. As a result, you get a view similar to the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio. You can easily add required folders to the existing project and set breakpoints in nested code files for debugging.

Column (Inline) Breakpoints

You can set breakpoints not only in rows, but also in columns. You may find this useful when debugging a LINQ expression. Use the context menu to toggle a breakpoint in a column. Alternatively, press the Shift + F9 shortcut.

The triangular indicator shows you the exact code where the debugger is currently stopped.

Conditional breakpoints, Log-points, Hit-points

.NET Meteor supports advanced breakpoint types, such as conditional breakpoints or breakpoints that write text to console. You can also combine several customizations in a single breakpoint. Right-click your breakpoint, press Edit Breakpoint and specify the required settings.

Source code downloading and debugging

You can download and debug the source code of third-party libraries if they contain PDB files with embedded links to a repository with source code. Meteor can automatically download source code if available and copy it to the .meteor\sources folder in your project. You can always open the downloaded file and debug it. You can even download and debug .NET MAUI source code. This helped me so many times when I tried to understand why an error occurs or when I just wanted to understand how a certain mechanism works.

Cross-platform

The main benefit is that with VS Code and .NET Meteor, all these features are available in Mac, Windows and Linux!

Conclusion

Although Visual Studio is a great and feature-rich IDE, you may find the conjunction of VS Code and .NET Meteor useful for your development tasks. My colleagues at DevExpress and I use it on a daily basis and probably you can also give it a try:) Let’s make .NET MAUI great together!

DEV Community: Nikita Romanov

.NET Meteor Update - New Level of Productivity for .NET MAUI in VS Code

Enhanced XAML Hot Reload

Performance & Memory Profiling (Trace, GCDump)

Functional Breakpoints

Breakpoints Bound Status

Debug Console Completion Items

Integration with DotRush

Conclusion

Boost .NET MAUI Development Productivity: 6 Powerful Features of .NET Meteor for VS Code in Windows, Mac & Linux

Introduction

VS Code vs Visual Studio for Mac

Basic XAML IntelliSense

Multiple Folders in Workspace

Column (Inline) Breakpoints

Conditional breakpoints, Log-points, Hit-points

Source code downloading and debugging

Cross-platform

Conclusion

Links