.NET MAUI iOS – Azure Pipelines error: ‘x’ is not available in iOS 16

The Error: The error message suggests that the ‘UIKit.UISceneSessionActivationRequest’ type, used as a parameter in ‘UIKit.UIApplication.ActivateSceneSession,’ is not available in iOS 16.2 and was introduced in iOS 17.0. This discrepancy indicates a version misalignment in the development environment, specifically with the iOS SDK and Xcode.

Root cause

The root cause of this error lies in the version of the macOS image used in the Azure Pipelines configuration. By default, the ‘macOS-latest’ image is pulled, which corresponds to macOS 12 (at the time of the blog post). However, the .NET MAUI app with Azure Pipelines requires macOS v13 to work seamlessly, as it aligns with the necessary dependencies for iOS development.

Resolution

To resolve this error, developers need to update the macOS image specified in the Azure Pipelines configuration. Instead of using ‘macOS-latest,’ the configuration should be modified to use ‘macOS-13.’ This ensures that the appropriate version of macOS is utilized during the build process, addressing the compatibility issues with iOS 16.2 and the required UIKit types.

Step-by-Step

-Open your Azure Pipelines configuration file (typically named azure-pipelines.yml).
-Locate the section where the macOS image is specified. It might look something like this:

pool:
  vmImage: 'macOS-latest'

-Update the image reference to ‘macOS-13’:

pool:
  vmImage: 'macOS-13'

-Save the changes to the configuration file.
-Commit the updated configuration file to your version control system (e.g., Git).
-Trigger a new build in Azure Pipelines, and the updated macOS image will be used.

.NET MAUI + Visual Studio Code: Debugging Cancelled: XCode Not Found

One common issue users face is the “Debugging Cancelled: XCode Not Found” error on macOS. In this blog post, we’ll explore a step-by-step guide to troubleshoot and resolve this vexing problem.

Solution 1: Verify VS Code Command Line Tools Installation
Before diving into complex solutions, let’s start with the basics. Ensure that the VS Code command line tools are correctly installed on your machine. Run the following command in the terminal:

xcode-select --install

This command installs the necessary tools for XCode. After installation, verify that the path is correctly set by running:

xcode-select -p

Ensure that the path points to your XCode installation. If not, set it using the following command:

sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Solution 2: Force Quit and Relaunch VS Code
Sometimes, issues can be resolved by simply force quitting VS Code and relaunching it. This action ensures a fresh start, eliminating any temporary glitches that might be causing the problem.

Solution 3: Restart VS Code
A restart can work wonders in resolving software-related issues. Save your work, close VS Code, and then relaunch it. This simple step can refresh the IDE and might solve the “Debugging Cancelled: XCode Not Found” issue.

Solution 4: Reinstall .NET MAUI Extension
If the problem persists, the next step is to reinstall the .NET MAUI extension. Extensions can occasionally become corrupted or outdated, leading to compatibility issues. Open the Extensions view in VS Code, locate the .NET MAUI extension, and uninstall it. Afterward, reinstall the latest version from the Visual Studio Code marketplace.

Solution 5: Reinstall Visual Studio Code
If all else fails, consider reinstalling Visual Studio Code. Uninstall the current version, download the latest version from the official website, and perform a clean installation. This ensures that any corrupted files or configurations are completely removed, and you start with a fresh setup.

.NET MAUI – One or more invalid file names were detected.

Developers working on .NET MAUI projects may encounter a perplexing error during the build process, revealing invalid file names that must adhere to specific rules.

/usr/local/share/dotnet/packs/Microsoft.Maui.Resizetizer.Sdk/7.0.101/targets/Microsoft.Maui.Resizetizer.targets(525,9): error : One or more invalid file names were detected. File names must be lowercase, start and end with a letter character, and contain only alphanumeric characters orunderscores.

The Solution

To resolve this issue, developers need to identify and correct the problematic file names. On macOS, the hidden file .DS_Store is a common culprit causing this error. Here’s a step-by-step guide to resolving the issue:

For macOS

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Navigate to the root directory of your project.
  3. Press Command + Shift + Period to toggle the visibility of hidden files.
  4. Look for any hidden files, particularly .DS_Store.
  5. Delete or rename the problematic hidden files.

If the Finder app does not show any files, try opening a terminal, navigate to the resources folder of your project, and type ls -la to see the files. It should display the invalid files. Remove them accordingly.

For Windows

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. Navigate to the root directory of your project.
  3. Select the “View” tab on the File Explorer ribbon.
  4. Check the “Hidden items” option in the “Show/hide” group.
  5. Look for any hidden files, and particularly check for files similar to .DS_Store (Windows might have different hidden files causing the issue).
  6. Delete or rename the problematic hidden files.

My flawless cross-platform data sync experiences

In this article, I would like to share my own experience of how I use different service providers to make sure that my files, music, passwords, emails are available on all my devices. Be it macOS, Windows, Android or iOS. The services detailed below reflect my personal preferences. It is possible that there are better providers that are cheaper or that offer more functionality. If you know of such, help readers by writing in to tell us what works for you. I personally do not like Google’s services. I will not recommend Google Drive, Authenticator and other services in this article, but I am sure that their solutions can solve the architecture I consider to be proven.

What I’d like to show you is how I manage in my daily life to make sure that all my data is in sync and accessible on all my devices, almost without exception.

File Storage and e-mail account. Notes, Calendar, Contacts.

I personally chose Microsoft’s OneDrive technology as my storage and email provider. They give you 5GB of cloud storage space in their free plan, and an extra 15 GB for emails. For a very long time I subscribed to Microsoft OneDrive +100GB for $2 per month, which is fair, but then recently I decided to subscribe to Microsoft Office 365. Partly so I could have a licensed Microsoft Office subscription of my own to access important files on my personal computer, and partly because they are increasing the cloud storage to 1TB. On top of that, we also get support for recovering our deleted, lost files, or if a file encryption caused by a ransomware virus happens, it can detect and stop the operation. The one terabyte package runs around $60 for a year (+VAT, which is 27% in Hungary). If you buy it, you’ll also no longer have to watch the notifications on the outlook.com web interface. You also get the desktop versions of these in addition to the web versions of Excel, Word, Powerpoint. You can install the desktop version of Microsoft Office on 5 computers with one license key.

OneDrive use pretty serious file encryption, so you can feel safe with your files here, but if you have something really personal in your cloud, there’s the safe feature, which uses an extra encryption algorithm in addition to a number of security requirements

On Windows the OneDrive client is integrated, on macOS it can be installed separately, it integrates quite nicely into the system. You can configure them not to download the entire cloud content to your computer unnecessarily, but to have a file available in the file structure in case you want to store it. What it does is download the file to the physical hard disk before use. This saves a lot of space.
On Android, the OneDrive client also integrates quite well with the operating system, but I don’t use an Android device on a daily basis, just an iPhone.
Mobile clients can automatically back up your camera roll. The upload is an interesting solution for iOS, as they couldn’t do it in the background: they developed a screen called “Night Backup”, which basically layers a wakelock on the display and takes the brightness off the phone. You can view files on your mobile “without downloading”. Handles the web client for the iPhone HEIC format.

Your Outlook email address can be accessed via an Exchange server, which also allows you to save Calendar and Reminders, Notes, Contacts. Personally, I have all syncing turned off in iCloud because I sync my notes to my Outlook account. If you set macOS and iOS to take your outlook email address as your Internet account, the built-in Notes, Email, Calendar app can handle it. This is good because in Windows it’s also built-in to sync everything to the outlook account, so you get a Notepad and Calendar on top of the emails. So if you add a meeting to your calendar, it’ll show up immediately on your iOS/Android device, and also on macOS. Of course it works in all directions. The only downside to the notepad is that on macOS you can’t bold letters, insert a diagram, etc. in the notes app. So if you have an iPad and an Apple Penciled, you’ll have to choose a different way to draw.

Plus one thing besides Outlook that I haven’t seen with any other provider: you can assign aliases to your email address. So you don’t have to register a new email address if you get bored of your old email, you can simply add another address to the account and use up to 10 email addresses with one mailbox.
You can find out more about the packages and their services here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onedrive/compare-onedrive-plans?activetab=tab%3aprimaryr1

Music

This is probably the subject I have dealt with the least. I spend about 80,000 minutes a year listening to music. I clearly chose an online music service provider. My choice was Spotify. Since then, I have tried a service called Tidal once, which is quasi the same as Spotify, but lossless music, but I didn’t feel it was worth the extra money, I couldn’t take advantage of it.
Spotify has the ability to sync playlists between all platforms. It has a relatively good algorithm for recommending music. You can download tracks of reasonable quality for offline listening on its mobile app. The radio in my car supports it natively. Of course, the 1TB of storage space could hold a lot of music, but you don’t have to worry about downloading it

More information about Spotify: https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/

Password management and two-factor authentication

I never use the same password on any service. In fact, it could be said that I don’t even use passwords, because I don’t know any of them by memory. This is because I let the computer generate super long and complicated passwords. That’s pretty much how to use a password manager effectively, and how to perhaps exist one step more securely on the Internet.

What was important to me was to make the password manager work on macOS and windows, and to be able to add passwords to iOS not only in safari, but also in the apps.

Microsoft Authenticator could have been the perfect solution, but it wasn’t. (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/mobile-authenticator-app) As I am logged in to my work account on my devices, where the password storage functionality of the Authenticator application is disabled by policy, I cannot add passwords to my personal account. But maybe that’s okay, it’s less responsibility on my Microsoft account. After much searching, I found LastPass to be the most sensible password management application. It works on mac on windows, in all browsers, and integrates with iOS. And it can also fill in passwords in apps. https://www.lastpass.com/pricing.

Another very important thing is to protect your account from unauthorised access. Almost all websites can be set up with two-factor authentication, be it Instagram, Facebook, GitHub, etc. Lastpass also has an Authenticator application that can generate such two-factor passcodes. Just like Microsoft authenticator. I’ve set up two-factor authentication everywhere.

This content has 2 years. Some of the information in this post may be out of date or no longer work. Please, read this page keeping its age in your mind.

Run .NET MAUI apps with Visual Studio for Mac

VS for Mac 17.0 Preview version is not yet supporting MAUI applications. But you can run them on macOS too, but you will need a terminal window for it!

MAUI projects can not be set as a runnable project (yet)
.NET 6 Xamarin and MAUl projects are not supported with this version of Visual Studio. The included target frameworks are not supported: net6.0-android|net6.0-ios|net6.0-maccatalyst

If you are not familiar, how to set up your environment to start developing with .NET newest technology named MAUI, then read this article by me: https://www.banditoth.hu/2021/12/29/setup-net-maui-project-on-macos/

Build and run on macOS

Open up a terminal, and navigate next to your .sln file. Give out the following command:

dotnet build YourSolutionName -t:Run -f net6.0-maccatalyst

This will run your application on macOS. If you wish, you can change the last parameter to net6.0-android or net6.0-ios too.

This content has 2 years. Some of the information in this post may be out of date or no longer work. Please, read this page keeping its age in your mind.