Jetpack Compose Support

[cosminstirbu]

Hello,

Our team is invested in building cross platform applications using Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android (not Xamarin.Forms / .NET MAUI).

These are a few reasons why we prefer using Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android over Xamarin.Forms:

• Our previous experience is with building native iOS and Android apps, so we were already familiar with the API surface for both iOS and Android
• It gives us fine-grained control in terms of how we can build the user interface
• We can easily recruit developers and we can also easily transition between building native apps and Xamarin.iOS / Xamarin.Android apps because they are largely based on the same skill set (the API surface of iOS and Android)

In the past couple of years though, both SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose gained more popularity and we are interested in being able to use these UI frameworks from C#.

Being able to use SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose in C# is important because it will continue to make Xamarin.iOS / Xamarin.Android appealing for native application developers, making it a good long term investment since the pool of developers would be larger than if we would focus solely on Xamarin.Forms / .NET MAUI. Also this will allow them to reuse their skills and easily transition between native and Xamarin.iOS / Xamarin.Android applications.

The Xamarin.iOS team spent some time investigating if SwiftUI can be surfaced in C# dotnet/macios#6235. Long story short, there's no clear path when and if it can be done.

What about Jetpack Compose? Are there any plans to surface it in C#? Has any research been done in this direction?

Thank you,
Cosmin

[jpobst]

We've done a little bit of research on this:
dotnet/android-libraries#352

However it's looking like this isn't going to be supported in C#. Especially if it can't even be done in Java then I think it's very unlikely it will work for C#.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66433437/can-i-write-jetpack-compose-components-in-java

[cosminstirbu]

Given the investments made by Google and Apple, I'd say that in 2 years or so, Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI will be the main frameworks used to build user interfaces on each platform.

Since it doesn't seem technically feasible to expose them in C#, it means that building the user interface separately on Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android doesn't look like a good long term investment any longer.

This gives us something to think about when considering what technology to use to build the user interface.

Thank you for your answer.