This project shows how to integrate Avalonia UI and CoreRT. Both frameworks are under heavy development, have sparce documentation, and require subtle knowledge spread across multiple sources. Using this project, you will learn how to develop using both frameworks. You may also use it as a starting point for your projects.
System requirements
This project is tested only under Windows, and this readme assumes you are using Windows. To build this project, you need:
- Any supported 64-bit edition of Windows. CoreRT requires 64-bit Windows and produces only 64-bit Windows apps.
- Visual Studio. VS 20019 Community is free for personal use. Get if from here. When installing Visual Studio, select .NET desktop development and Desktop development with C++ workloads. To generate native code, CoreRT requires the native C++ toolchain and Windows SDK. This configuration ensures you have them.
- .Net Core SDK. At the time of writing, .Net Core 5.0 is in a preview state. Download it from here. Note: Make sure that you download and install the SDK. The runtime is not enough for building apps.
- Git. Install Git for Windows.
Getting started
Get the source code
After you have installed the prerequisites, your first step is to get the source code:
- From the Windows Start menu, start x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019. This configures the development environment with 64-bit dev tools, which CoreRT requires to build your apps.
- Get the sample project. Go to your terminal, and clone it:
git clone git@github.com:teobugslayer/AvaloniaCoreRTDemo.git
cd AvaloniaCoreRTDemo
Then, build the sample:
dotnet publish -r win-x64 -c release
Note: Avalonia and CoreRT are huge and downloading their NuGet packages may take some time. During this period, which happens on the first build, and when CoreRT releases a new version, it will look like nothing happens. Just be patient.
We are ready - In your terminal, navigate to src\bin\Release\net5.0\win-x64\publish, and start AvaloniaCoreRTDemo.exe - it should work!
Background information
At the time of writing, there's an incompatibility between the current version of Avalonia (0.9.10) and CoreRT, which we need to solve. To give you context, CoreRT is an ahead-of-time compiler, and specific code patterns cannot be used with it, while JIT compilers handle them easily. One such pattern is the infinite generic type expansions, and one of Avalonia dependencies uses it. The library which uses this code has released a fixed version. However, Avalonia has not been updated yet. To solve this problem, we force the new version of the sub-dependency in the project file:
<PackageReference Include="System.Reactive" Version="4.4.1" />
Further development
Feel free to use this sample as a base for your projects.
When developing, keep in mind that Avalonia uses Reflection extensively. CoreRT, being an AOT compiler, needs your help to get reflection right. Refer to rd.xml file in the solution. In it, you describe all assemblies and types which your app would potentially reflect over. For more information, see Reflection in AOT mode
This project is configured to help you debug issues with publishing. Before publishing, check the CSPROJ file and modify the various Ilc* properties according to Optimizing CoreRT document.