Wider events and that some of what I'm trying to do with the toolkit has turned out to be much, much harder than I originally expected and means it's taking longer than I hoped but progress is being made.
What's new?
There are three big new items with this release:
- 1- Custom XAML Analysis
I compare the XAML Analysis functionality to Roslyn Analyzers (and code-fixes) for C# (or VB.NET). The big difference is that you can create your own Roslyn Analyzers to check (and fix) code in any way you wish.
There are more details in the official docs, but the way it works is:
- Create a 'Custom Rapid XAML Analyzer' project (This template is now part of the toolkit.)
- Add the logic for analyzing the element and indicating what actions, if any, should be displayed.
It means you can easily create things like this:
The code for the above is a proof-of-concept and can be seen here. Hopefully, it's easy to read.
The method queries an object representing the XAML in the document and returns a response that handles what to display and what, if anything, to do to fix it. The tool takes care of all the interaction with Visual Studio and making the changes. You can't do *everything* but hopefully, it's most, if not all you need.
- 2- Perform XAML Analysis at build time
The Visual Studio extension does analysis at design-time. It gives feedback on the documents you have open.
This new package allows for the evaluation of ALL the .xaml files in a project when the project is built. This means you won't miss something in another file. It means you can check files that anyone works on, even if they don't have the extension installed. It even means you can incorporate analysis checks as part of a CI/DevOps process. Don't want someone to check-in invalid XAML to your repo?--now you can. ;)
Yes, this also works with custom analyzers.
- 3- A new promotional website: https://rapidxaml.dev
What's still to come?
There are a number of little things I still want to add before calling it version 1.0.
There are also a few bugs that need fixing and some experimental ideas that might get in for the 1.0 release.
Background
If you don't know. The Rapid XAML Toolkit started out as an open-source project in a Microsoft repo on GitHub as a collection of tools to make it easier to create and work with XAML files, whether that be in WPF, UWP, or Xamarin.Forms apps. Last year the decision was made that it wouldn't be released by Microsoft and the functionality wouldn't be incorporated into Visual Studio. So, I, as a major contributor, took ownership of the repo and will be releasing it myself.
I believe it contains useful functionality that will empower every XAML developer on the planet to achieve more.
What now?
- Install the extension - give it a try.
If you had the preview version installed (the one called "Rapid XAML (Preview)"), you should uninstall that first.
Awasome
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