Before you create an ePortal Xamarin Forms project on Mac, you must set up the following on your Mac:
Xamarin Scaffolding extension
Xamarin Nuget package
Since there is no specific installer for this on Mac, you have to copy some files from the ePortal Developer installation folder on Windows.
After installing ePortal Developer on Windows, perform the following steps:
From the Packages folder in ePortal Developer installation, copy the “Unisys.Xamarin.Scaffolding.<version#>.nupkg” file to a suitable location on Mac.
This location needs to be set up as a local NuGet package source in Visual Studio, so that the NuGet package can be installed in the project.
From the Tools\Extensions folder in ePortal Developer installation, copy the Add-In file “ePortalRESTApiClientGenerator.ePortalXamarinScaffolding_<version#>.mpack” to a suitable location on Mac. For example, /Users/<UserName>/VSExtensions.
Open Visual Studio on the Mac and create a new Xamarin Forms project as follows:
In the New Project dialog box, under the Multiplatform section, select App.
Select the Blank Forms App template, and click Next.
Note: This is only a temporary project for setting up the new extension and a local NuGet package source location. You can remove this later.
After you create the project, select the Visual Studio – Extensions… menu.
This will display the Extension Manager window.
Click the Install from file… button, and navigate to the location where the .mpack add-in file is located.
Select the file and click Open.
This installs the Unisys Xamarin Scaffolding extension in Visual Studio for Mac. On the Extension Manager window, under the IDE Extensions group, an extension “ePortal Scaffolding for Xamarin” appears.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Dependencies/NuGet project node, and select Add Packages….
This displays the window for adding Nuget Packages.
Select Configure Sources… from the list to specify the source location.
Click Add to add a new package source.
Enter a name for the new package source and browse to the location where the Unisys.Xamarin.scaffolding NuGet package is copied earlier.
Select this location and click Add Source.
This adds the selected folder as a local NuGet package source.
Once this setup is complete, you can close Visual Studio and discard the project you created. You are now ready to create ePortal Xamarin Forms apps using Visual Studio for Mac.
To create a Xamarin Forms project using Visual Studio for Mac, perform the following steps:
In the New Project dialog box, under the Multiplatform section, select App.
Select the ePortal Xamarin project template, and click Next.
In the Configure your new ePortal Xamarin project dialog box, do the following:
In the Project Name box, type the name of the project.
In the Solution Name box, type the name of the solution.
Select a Location by clicking Browse… and click Create.
The Xamarin Forms project is now ready to import an OpenAPI specification and scaffold the app,