Draft release notes

• Application build and deployment
• Preview bindings for Android 12 Developer Preview 2
• Binding project build
• Notable issues fixed

Application build and deployment

• Developer Community 1288717: Support Fast Deployment for System Applications. Added support for fast deployment while building system based applications. Applications developed in this mode need to be signed with a platform key and set /manifest/@android:sharedUserId to android.uid.system within AndroidManifest.xml:

          <manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
              android:sharedUserId="android.uid.system"
              …>
          </manifest>

• Developer Community 1363149: System.ArgumentException when %PATH% or %PATHEXT% contain ".

• GitHub PR 5304: Add support for producing a ProGuard mapping.txt file to the build system. This file can be used by users to remove this warning:

  "This App Bundle contains Java/Kotlin code, which might be obfuscated."
  

  ... when uploading packages to the Google Play Store.

  In order to opt-in to this behavior, set the AndroidProguardMappingFile MSBuild property in your project file to the path of the file you want generated:

  <PropertyGroup>
    <AndroidProguardMappingFile>$(OutputPath)\mapping.txt</AndroidProguardMappingFile>
  </PropertyGroup>

• GitHub PR 5327: Allow users to specify additional app bundle "modules" when building using $(AndroidPackageFormat) set to aab.

• GitHub Issue 5562: Fix NullReferenceException from <LinkAssembliesNoShrink/> task.

• GitHub Issue 5627: Allow multiple r-classes.jar files to be included in a build.

• GitHub Issue 5633: Support $(AndroidUseInterpreter) under .NET 6.

• GitHub Issue 5710: Command too long error when deploying an app with lots of localization assemblies.

• GitHub Issue 5723: BuildVersionCodes.R had the wrong value.

• GitHub Issue 5751: On .NET 6, the default value for $(SuppressTrimAnalysisWarnings) is True.

• GitHub PR 5726: An external contribution by @mfranke-moba, which adds support for out and inout array parameters in AIDL files. Fixes GitHub Issue 4717 and GitHub Issue 5079.

Preview bindings for Android 12 Developer Preview 2

This version includes preview bindings for the second Developer Preview of Android 12 from Google. See the Android 12 Developer Preview documentation for additional information about the behavior and API changes in this new Android version. To try the bindings for the new APIs in a Xamarin.Android project, set the $(TargetFrameworkVersion) to v11.0.99 in the .csproj file:

<TargetFrameworkVersion>v11.0.99</TargetFrameworkVersion>

Binding project build

• GitHub Issue 767: When using @(JavaSourceJar), generator will extract parameter names from the Java source code.

• GitHub Issue 790: Allow Metadata.xml files to affect Kotlin visibility.

• GitHub Issue 2745: error MSB3375 when using @(JavaDocJar).

• GitHub Issue 5474: Fix @(JavaDocJar) when using JDK 11.

Notable issues fixed

• GitHub Issue 4929: Fix make prepare on Ubuntu release 20.

• GitHub Issue 5400: Remove System.Linq.Expressions usage within Java.Interop.JniRuntime.

• GitHub Issue 5409: On .NET 6, a Debug build of Java.Interop.dll causes a Xamarin.Forms app to crash because of bad typemaps.

• GitHub Issue 5518: Allow the xamarin/xamarin-android repo to build on Apple Silicon.