MAUI is still in preview state, so the production apps are not recommended to upgrade to .NET MAUI. But it is important to be open to new technology, so take some time to review the update.
It’s possible that by the time you read this post, you’ll be able to convert a MAUI projects from UI, but it’s not currently an available feature for me.
What you will need
- Windows machine
- Visual Studio 2022 installed
Install required tools for MAUI
Open a command prompt and give out the following command:
dotnet workload install maui
If you have installed maui already, then you wont need to run this command again.
Install upgrade-assistant
There is a tool developed by Microsoft, not originally for MAUI, but because it is based on a fully extensible model, it has been made available for MAUI projects. Xamarin.Forms projects can be translated to the new version of the projects with this app:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/upgrade-assistant
dotnet tool install --global upgrade-assistant
Use the upgrade assistant
It is important to note that this application cannot independently translate Xamarin.Forms apps to MAUI. It only helps us in the upgrade process.
That’s why the app asks for constant instructions, so we can’t leave the machine running while we make coffee 🙂
Let’s change the directory of your command prompt to the directory where you store the .sln file
upgrade-assistant upgrade SolutionName.sln
Watch out for the output of the console. If everything goes well, your solution can be transformed to maui without issues.
In the header section of the console output, you will see what steps are required (or suggested) in order to complete the migration. You can decide what to do with the next step: Apply, skip, or do something else with it. If everything goes well, you will only need to press apply.
Once you have finished the upgrade assistant process, you can see the changes. Mostly in source codes and project files.
