Get Started

Install the templates

To install the templates for Fabulous for Xamarin.Forms, run the following command:

dotnet new install Fabulous.XamarinForms.Templates

You can check the installed templates on your machine by running the command:

dotnet new list

You should see the installed Fabulous for Xamarin.Forms templates:

Template Name           Short Name         Language  Tags                  
----------------------  -----------------  --------  ----------------------
Fabulous XF Blank       fabulous-xf        F#        Fabulous/Xamarin.Forms
Fabulous XF VS Windows  fabulous-xf-vswin  F#        Fabulous/Xamarin.Forms

If you are using Visual Studio on Windows, we recommend that you use the template fabulous-xf-vswin. This template uses the nuget.config file to reference dependencies, instead of PackageReference, to ensure compatibility with Visual Studio.

Create a project

To get started, we are going to use the simplest Fabulous for Xamarin.Forms template: Fabulous XF Blank (or fabulous-xf in the CLI).

Run the command:

dotnet new fabulous-xf -n GetStartedApp

This will create a new folder called GetStartedApp containing the new project.

In this folder, you'll find a shared project GetStartedApp as well as 2 other folders GetStartedApp.Android and GetStartedApp.iOS containing the head projects that will produce the application for the corresponding platform.

The templates only include Android and iOS projects, but Fabulous is also compatible with any platform supported by Xamarin.Forms such as WPF, macOS and Linux. See the official Xamarin.Forms documentation for more information.

Run a project

To run a project, we recommend you open the solution GetStartedApp.sln with your favorite IDE.

Once loaded, you'll be able to select which project to run (Android or iOS) along with the emulator or device to run on.

Press the debug button to deploy and run the application.

Please note that due to some limitations between F# and Xamarin, the Android project will fail to build the first time because of missing resources. Please build a second time to be able to debug.