Setting up your machine for Xamarin – Visual Studio 2017

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Hi you lovely people of the internet, today I’ll guide you through how to setup your machine for Xamarin development. The guide is going to be done in 2 flavors, vanilla(Visual Studio 2015) and chocolate(Visual Studio 2017). So let’s get started.

Chocolate guide 😊

  1. You’ll need a machine with at least 8GB of RAM. (Okay lah, 4GB also can but you must have greater patience. For folks like me, I like to trade patience with more RAM)
  2. Getting the installer
  1. For the cool kids that already have Visual Studio 2017 installed – we just have to modify the installer a abit 😉

 

Step 1: Make sure you have this checked when you install

  •     Universal Windows App development
  •     .NET desktop development
  •     .NET and web development
  •     Mobile Development with .NET
  •     Mobile Development with Javascript
  •     .Net core platform development

*It’s a long list compared to 2015. Since these would be the commonly used stuff besides pure Xamarin, let’s just do everything in one go.

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Step 2: Wait for it to finish install & you’re done 😊 Installation depends on feng shui – your internet speed, your processor speed, the amount of RAM you have etc.

 

For the cool kids – with Visual Studio 2017 installed

Step 1: Launch Visual Studio and type in installer on the top right corner (under quick search)

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Step 2: Click on the unreal engine installer.

Step 3: Make sure you have this checked when you install.

  •     Universal Windows App development
  •     .NET desktop development
  •     .NET and web development
  •     Mobile Development with .NET
  •     Mobile Development with Javascript
  •     .Net core platform development

OR

Locate and click on the installer that you’ve downloaded to install visual studio. Normally it’s named VS_something.exe. I find it easier to use the previous method.

 

To verify you have everything installed, after it’s done installing, launch Visual Studio and create a new project. If you see Android and iOS you’re most likely done and have a fully working development environment. There might be some errors due to feng shui issues but they can be corrected by using the cool kids way 😊 Reinstall, recheck, profit.

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Happy Developing & welcome to the fam!