VS2022 WinForms Designer Support in .NET Core

[mh (marc hoffman)]

@pthompson

Hi,

This thread from early 2021 held promise for WinForms support in .NET core :-

Hi there, are there plans to support the Windows Forms designer for .NET Core in Visual Studio 2019? Or IS it supported and doesn’t work for me only? Friendly regards (If i start a Microsoft C#-Project, i am able to use the designer, lacking the required license i can’t test with RemObjects C# - i’m using Oxygene only.)

We’re looking to move our developments forward and are going to come to a cross roads in spring 2024 as to which way to go. The key questions :-

1. At the moment am I right in thinking that designer support is not supported in .NET core when coding an Elements project ?
2. If it is still planned, can you give some reasonable firm indication of when ?

At present our other 3rd party provider does support .NET 7 in designer (DevExpress sample shown in VS 2022 below).

.NET Form Designer support for Core is still locked to VC# and VB, by Microsoft, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s f***ing stupid, but it’s what Microsoft decided to do.

DeveXpress does not, as far as I know, provide their own compiler or project system, so that’s I assume a Visual C# or Visual Basic.NET project. The designers support third party components, they are just explicitly hardcoded to not allow use with third party languages. Why? I don’t know.

@pthompson

Can you offer up some hope ?!

I’m afraid we’re both at Microsoft’s mercy, here :(.