Convert .NET Standard class library to native aar/jar
Currently, we are developing a .NET Standard class library that will be used by different Xamarin.* platforms.
I was wondering if there is a way to use the shared code in a native Android project (maybe produce an AAR/JAR file).
The reason I need this functionality is because our company provides an AAR to one of our customers (that is used by a native Android project), and we would like to keep a single source base instead of two.
Thanks in advance!
Solution 1:
Update:
The name changed to ".NET Embedding" and it is at v0.4 at the time of this update.
- https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/dotnetembedding/dotnetembedding_0/dotnetembedding_0.4/
New instructions:
- Installing .NET Embedding
Original post:
You can use Mono's Embeddinator-4000
It supports various language consumers, so it surfaces .NET code as idiomatic code in the target language. This is the list of supported languages at present:
- Objective-C: mapping .NET to idiomatic Objective-C APIs.
- Java: mapping .NET to idiomatic Java APIs.
- C: mapping .NET to an object-oriented like C APIs.
Embeddinator-4000 is a tool that allows your existing .NET Code (C#, F# and others) to be consumed from other programming languages and in various different environments.
Java is currently in a preview state for macOS, Windows, and Android.
The platform is selected by passing the --platform= command-line argument to the embeddinator. Currently macOS, Windows, and Android are supported.
re: https://mono.github.io/Embeddinator-4000/
As a part of the requires For Android you will need Xamarin.Android 7.4.99+ and Android Studio 3+ (Java 1.8) but if you are building Android apps with Xamarin and Java you would have those already.
Note: This tool is in Preview, so review the open issues and post new if needed.
re: https://github.com/mono/Embeddinator-4000/issues
Note: This is not trans-compiling, but embedding Mono's runtime in a native package that allow CIL code, AOT'd (i.e. iOS) or not to run within a different language/runtime.