migueldeicaza / cocoadriver

Xamarin.Mac-based Cocoa driver for Mono's System.Windows.Forms

Hi there 👋

These days

I am working at Xibbon building fun mobile applications like Godot for iPad, La Terminal, El Pintador, some RealityKit/VisionOS libraries.

These days, when I am hacking for pleasure, I mostly do it in Swift:

• SwiftTerm - VT100/Xterm terminal emulator
• SwiftGodot - Swift bindings for the Godot game engine
• SwiftGodotKit - a companion to SwiftGodotKit to drive Godot from Swift.
• SkiaKit - Swift bindings to the Skia library
• TermKit - Text mode UI toolkit for Swift
• TextBufferKit - port of the Visual Studio Code TextBuffer storage engine to Swift
• PlaticaBot - my MacOS, iOS and WatchOS client for ChatGPT
• TurboSwift - my joke TUI IDE for Swift
• SwiftNavigation - RecastNavigation/Detour for Swift
• RealityActions - Cocos2D-inspired action framework for RealityKit.

Past

I have been involved in the open source world for many years, starting sometime around 1990-1991 or so.

Some of the project I started:

• The Midnight Commander File Manager for Unix

• Started the GNOME project, along Federico Mena.

• Created the Gnumeric spreadsheet

• Founded Ximian, which we sold to Novell in 2003, and we built:

  • Evolution an Email and Calendar app for Linux
  • Red Carpet software management suite
  • Mono: an open source implementation of .NET
    • I managed the team, and designed core pieces, and wrote most of the original C# compiler.
  • At Novell, we believed that Linux on the Desktop was the future, and we built both Gtk# (a Gtk+ binding to .NET) and many (by those days' standards) desktop applications for Linux (F-Spot, for photo management; Dashboard as an early live assistant; Beagle, for searching; Banshee, our desktop music player).
  • Started Moonlight, in a 21-day hack-a-thon which later would get funded by Microsoft and Novell.
  • Did everything in my power to get and keep Unity on the .NET ecosystem, and that is why we have C# in all those games now.

• Founded Xamarin, a company focused on bringing C# to mobile platforms, which we sold to Microsoft in 2016.

  • We built a .NET Runtime for Android and iOS, and built a cloud-based testing platform (Xamarin Test Cloud)
  • Xamarin Profiler
  • Xamarin Workbooks
  • Xamarin.Forms which has now morphed into .NET MAUI
  • SkiaSharp - Bindings to the Skia engine for C#
  • UrhoSharp - I loved SceneKit, but I wanted a cross platform solution, now Godot is getting closer to that.

I served on a few boards:

• Free Software Foundation
• Gnome Foundation
• Outercurve Foundation
• .NET Foundation

Participated in some international standards:

• ECMA Common Intermediate Language
• ECMA C#

Crashed a few parties and a few conferences.

At Novell, I was VP for the Developer Platform, and built Xamarin out of the ashes of Novell's hostile takeover.

At Microsoft, I was a Distinguished Engineer working on Xamarin and .NET, and later on Microsoft's Azure and AI efforts. I loved working with the .NET team and the C# language design team. I got a few things in the language that I am particularly proud of:

• Generic Math for .NET - originally part of the PartyDonk project
• Static Virtual Interface Members - for interop with iOS and Android
• Default Interface Methods - same inspiration, but also, because they are both righteous
• And many other quality of life tidbits

I left Microsoft in 2022.

Some of my C# repositories in GitHub:

• XtermSharp
• gui.cs: this project started as a two-day joke, and is now a popular UI toolkit for consoles.
• Mono - the VM and the class libraries are now just part of upstream .NET
• TensorFlowSharp - no longer maintained, there are better TensorFlow alternatives.
• TorchSharp - PyTorch bindings to .NET, now developed by the .NET foundation

cocoadriver's Issues

Stuck at SharedApplication being null

According to the documentation, NSApplication.SharedApplication will automatically create the application for you, but this is returning null. I need to research this.

SharedApplication is probably scanning for the application listed on an Info.plist that does not exist in our case.

What are the requirements for building the CocoaDriver project?

I’m trying to build the CocoaDriver solution but I got this error:

Error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'XplatUIDriver' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) (CS0246) (CocoaDriver)

My configuration

Visual Studio Community 2017 for Mac (Preview)
Version 7.6 Preview (7.6 build 711)
Installation UUID: 43c29514-222e-43bb-8e8f-699723269f30
Runtime:
	Mono 5.12.0.226 (2018-02/9824e260f56) (64-bit)
	GTK+ 2.24.23 (Raleigh theme)
	Xamarin.Mac 4.4.0.36 (master / 0c7c49a6)

	Package version: 512000226

NuGet
Version: 4.3.1.4445

.NET Core
Runtime: /usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet
Runtime Versions:
	2.1.0-preview1-26216-03
	2.0.5
	2.0.0
	1.1.2
	1.0.5
SDK: /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/2.1.300-preview1-008174/Sdks
SDK Versions:
	2.1.300-preview1-008174
	2.1.4
	2.0.0
	1.0.4
MSBuild SDKs: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/5.12.0/lib/mono/msbuild/15.0/bin/Sdks

Xamarin.Profiler
Version: 1.6.3
Location: /Applications/Xamarin Profiler.app/Contents/MacOS/Xamarin Profiler

Xamarin.Android
Version: 8.3.0.19 (Visual Studio Community)
Android SDK: ~/Library/Android/sdk
	Supported Android versions:
		4.2 (API level 17)
		4.4 (API level 19)
		5.0 (API level 21)
		5.1 (API level 22)
		6.0 (API level 23)
		7.0 (API level 24)
		7.1 (API level 25)
		8.0 (API level 26)
		8.1 (API level 27)

SDK Tools Version: 26.1.1
SDK Platform Tools Version: 27.0.1
SDK Build Tools Version: 27.0.3

Java SDK: /usr
java version "1.8.0_131"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-b11, mixed mode)

Android Designer EPL code available here:
https://github.com/xamarin/AndroidDesigner.EPL

Apple Developer Tools
Xcode 9.2 (13772)
Build 9C40b

Xamarin.Mac
Version: 4.5.0.280 (Visual Studio Community)
Hash: e85a7be8
Branch: master
Build date: 2018-05-03 11:35:01-0400

Xamarin.iOS
Version: 11.11.0.280 (Visual Studio Community)
Hash: e85a7be8
Branch: master
Build date: 2018-05-03 11:35:00-0400

Xamarin Inspector
Version: 1.4.0
Hash: b3f92f9
Branch: master
Build date: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 22:00:34 GMT
Client compatibility: 1

Build Information
Release ID: 706000711
Git revision: 634060c6c105fd3ee36678fe547680fd258cbf45
Build date: 2018-05-04 16:11:06-04
Xamarin extensions: c6720450018cb69a3da7c6d0aa0715c013783595
Build lane: monodevelop-lion-master

Operating System
Mac OS X 10.12.6
Darwin 16.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0
    Tue Jan 30 11:27:06 PST 2018
    root:xnu-3789.73.11~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Enabled user installed extensions
Internet of Things (IoT) development (Preview) 7.5

I also tried with the version of mono that I just built from source today (Preferences → Projects → .NET Runtimes → Mono 5.15.0 (2674424a1bc) → Set as Default) but I got this error and the solution did not even load properly:

Error while trying to load the project '~/Projects/CocoaDriver/CocoaHost/CocoaHost.csproj': Did not find MSBuild for runtime Mono 5.15.0 (2674424a1bc)

What am I missing to properly build the Cocoa driver?