How to port existing Windows Store Application to Windows8 Mobile App ?

Question

We have existing Windows Store application which is developed using C# and XAML. We want to port the same to Windows 8 Mobile application. Is there any Guidelines available for this ?

Answer 1

The answers given so far are quite good. One thing to note is that Windows Phone 8.1 is about to be released, which will share many of the WinRT libraries. This will mean that in a few months (as early as May), the shared libraries between the two platforms will greatly increase. You can download the leaked SDK to see what some of the changes will be.

Not that you should wait until then, and creating a PCL is definitely going to help you (especially if you want to later move to iOS, Android as well). It's just something to keep in mind.

Answer 2

Dnt know how you have made these applications well If you have followed MVVM pattern then it is very easy to port windows and windows phone apps from one to other. You just need to take care of new XAML UIs every thing except some platform specific liberalizes will work. While making any of windows store and windows phone application you should use the liberaries that both platforms can consume. For example you can use LEX.db for the database.

here are very good explanations for it.

sharing code between windows phone and windows 8 app -1

sharing code between windows phone and windows 8 app -2

hope this will help

Answer 3

Well at first I would start figuring out the differences

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj681690%28v=vs.105%29.aspx

http://blog.markedup.com/2013/07/winrt-windows-phone-8-code-sharing-pitfalls/

When I ported two of my (smaller) apps, I put as much in a PCL (portable class library) as I could. All the stuff that remained in the project itself needed to be rewritten. If you have well-maintainable code, there should be only UI (what you have to adapt anyway) and very few platform specific code (like accessing filesystem, camera or whatever) left. This is the part you must redevelop.