CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xamarinxamarin.forms
Jannik
Jannik

Reputation: 2429

Possible to build an application for linux?

I am trying to build a game which will be based on a (I guess thats the best way for a some sort of pokergame?!) client server architecture.

I am using the Xamarin Plugin for Visual Studio 2015 and Xamarin.Forms for my Android client (later I might build a IOS client and a Windows Phone client aswell, thats why I chose Xamarin.Forms).

Since I would like to not have a Windows Server, I am about to implement a linux server application, which interacts with my clients.

Now I have two basic questions:

  1. Is it possible to build a Linux app with Xamarin's Visual Studio Plugin on Windows? If not, how would you do it?
  2. How would you interact with your clients, are there free frameworks, that offer me automated object transportation between client and server? I saw there is a Framework called NetworkComms.NET, but even the non-Commercial version costs real cash.

I'm sorry for this slightly broad/opinion-based question, but I have no idea how to tag or ask this basic questions in a better way.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3359

Answers (1)

Sami Kuhmonen
Sami Kuhmonen

Reputation: 31153

To build a server application with .NET for Linux you don't need Xamarin. You can use Visual Studio, create a console application and run it with Mono on Linux.

You can use most of what .NET offers, more information on application portability on Mono's website.

You can use NuGet packages as long as they are managed code, or there is a Linux native version. Windows native code will not work directly on Linux. Some native libraries, like SQLite, are available with Mono and will work without issues.

You can build the application with Visual Studio and then deploy the binaries on Linux when needed, or you can compile the whole thing with Mono. The latter might show the hidden errors if you use some parts of .NET that Mono doesn't provide, but in regular development those won't come up.

Upvotes: 2

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