Avant Garde

Avant Garde is a cross-platform XAML previewer for the C# Avalonia Framework. It operates as a standalone application that works with your IDE, rather than an extension to an IDE. This means that Avant Garde is completely IDE agnostic.

DOWNLOAD & INSTALL

Avant Garde is licensed under GPLv3 or later.

If you like this project, don't forget to like and share. If you don't like it, just keep that to yourself. :)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Avant Garde supports Avalonia XAML (AXAML) with .NET. It cannot be used to preview WPF or MAUI applications. If you find it doesn't work with MAUI, there's no use raising a bug.

Linux & Windows

Downloads include AppImages, deb and RPMs for Linux, and a Setup Installer for Windows.

MacOS?

Avant Garde is not actively supported or tested on MacOS, although there are reports of it working fine. However, you will need to clone and build from source. This is straight-forward as there are no special build requirements. You may also need to set the $DOTNET_HOST_PATH variable to point to the dotnet command.

Features

• Avant Garde is a standalone application rather than an extension to an IDE.

• It provides a read-only view of your Avalonia project, watching for file changes.

• Set its main window to stay-on-top, and it will update the moment you save your files from your IDE.

• While Avant Garde looks like a simple IDE and, indeed, can be used to browse your entire project, the generation of XAML previews is the primary use case. It is not a XAML designer or an editor. It does not modify your project files or write to your project directories.

• It supports preview scale, mouse interaction and a range of other features, including the ability to generate and export an Avalonia schema (XSD) file. See below for information.

• Command line arguments provide for integration with IDEs where supported. For example, it is possible to launch Avant Garde so that a particular AXAML file is selected and shown on opening. It is also possible to launch it with its built-in Project Explorer hidden so as to minimize the application window foot-print.

• It supports a dark theme, so can match your desktop. See the application "Preferences".

Using Avant Garde

Simply open a .sln or .csproj as you would in any IDE.

By the default, only ".axaml;.xaml" and image files are shown in the Project Explorer as these are the primary files you will want to see in Avant Garde. The rest of your project source will not be shown, but can be enabled (see "Solution Settings" below).

Below, Visual Code on Linux with Avant Garde floating in stay-on-top mode to the right. Note, here, that the Avant Garde project explorer has been hidden so that only the form preview is shown. This minimizes the window footprint. The preview will be updated as XAML changes are saved to file from your IDE.

Finding Your Assembly

In order to generate previews, Avant Garde must find your application assembly which must first be built. This is usual practice with XAML previewers. If your assembly is in the usual place, i.e. under project/bin/Debug..., Avant Garde will find it. If, however, if you are using variables or a Directory.Build.props file to set your output location, you will need to specify this location at the project level (see below).

Solution Settings

Avant Garde keeps state and settings for each solution or project you open. Solution and project settings are specific to Avant Garde and, typically, the default values suffice and you will not need to change them. Any changes you do make, however, are saved by Avant Garde so that such changes persist between application launches. Note that these settings are stored outside of your project as Avant Garde does not write to your project directories.

With a solution file open, click Edit->Solution (or the "cog icon" in the toolbar) to view solution level settings. As shown below, these apply to your "solution", and all sub-projects contained within it.

For example, setting "Include File Pattern" to "*" will cause all project files to be shown in the Explorer. Remember, however, that views are read-only and Avant Garde is not intended to be used as a text editor or IDE.

Project Settings

Project settings pertain to each project within a solution.

Click Edit->Project, or the "cog icon" beside the project in the Explorer on the left side.

As described, if your target assembly output cannot be located on disk, this is the place to specify it, as shown above.

Moreover, if your project is a class library, it will be necessary to specify a relevant application project before previews can be generated.

Normally, Avant Garde will detect the Avalonia version from your project .csproj file. There are certain instances when your project may not include the Avalonia package directly, but instead reference another class library which does. In this case, you must set the Avalonia version yourself which must be installed in your development environment.

Preview Options

There are a number of options associated with preview generation, as shown by the drop-down button below:

Grid Lines & Colors

The "Grid Lines & Colors" options will cause instances of XAML Grid to be high-lighted with lines and background shade colours.

Disable Events

The "Disable Events" option disables mouse interaction with the preview. This may be useful because it strips out all known Avalonia Control events from the XML prior to preview generation. When disabled, events can be added and changed in the source code without having to re-build the assembly each time.

Prefetch Assets

When checked, the "Prefetch Assets" option will cause Avant Garde to locate asset files (i.e. images) within your project source rather than the assembly. This, like "Disable Events", means that assets may be added or updated without having to rebuild on each change.

Stay-on-top Pin

When working in an IDE, it is sometimes useful to keep Avant Garde on top while minimising the footprint of the main window. On Linux, both Gnome and KDE provide an "Always on Top" option from the titlebar.

On other systems, a "pin" button is available to do the same thing in Avant Garde itself. By default, on Linux, the pin button is hidden* but can be made visible from the Preferences window, as shown above.

* This was done because it is not always possible to align the pin button state with "always on top" check state shown in the title bar, that and the fact it is not typically needed on Linux.

Export Avalonia Schema

As a bonus feature, Avant Garde is able to generate and export an Avalonia schema (XSD) file. The schema file is generated by querying all Avalonia types, and is specific to the Avalonia version against which Avant Garde was built.

The exported XSD file may be used with an IDE plugin extension to provide AXAML auto-completion and help reference hints. Below, Visual Code with the Xml Complete extension, but referencing the XSD generated by Avant Garde.

Note, although the XmlComplete extension ships with its own Avalonia XSD file, it is possible to furnish it with an alternative one using the extension's settings. This is exactly what we have done above, using an Avant Garde generated XSD stored locally. You should find the XSD generated by Avant Garde to be much more comprehension than that shipped by Xml Complete because it is auto-generated by querying all available Avalonia types, and aims to provide comprehensive auto-completion and reference information, rather than a limited number of human generated explanations.

Command Line Options

Command line options can be utilized to launch Avant Garde from an IDE, as supported.

Usage:

AvantGarde [filename] [-options]

This assumes AvantGarde is in the path.

Typically, filename is expected to be .sln or .csproj file. However, it is also possible to launch AvantGarde with any file within the project hierarchy provided there exists a .csproj file in a parent directory above the file.

Options:

-h, --help
Show help information.

-v, --version
Show version information.

-m, --min-explorer
Show with minimized explorer and non-maximized main window.

-s=name, --select=name
Select and preview given item on opening. Name can be a leaf name or fully qualified path.

Examples:

Below, opens a solution and selects/previews MainWindow.axaml immediately on opening.

AvantGarde ~/MyProject/MyProject.sln --select=MainWindow.axaml

Below, as with the first example, except that the project explorer will also be minimized to the side of the window.

AvantGarde ~/MyProject/MyProject.sln --min-explorer -s=MainWindow.axaml

Below, we supply a .axaml file rather than a .sln or .csproj.

AvantGarde ~/MyProject/Views/MainWindow.axaml

Here, AvantGarde will locate the first .csproj file it finds in the directory structure above the supplied path level. The result will be similar to the first example above because the MainWindow.axaml preview will be shown on opening so that the "--select" option is not necessary here.

Miscellanous

Avant Garde will read the $DOTNET_HOST_PATH environment variable to determine the location of dotnet. If this is undefined, dotnet is assumed to be in the path.

Copyright & License

Copyright (C) Andy Thomas, 2022-24. Website: https://kuiper.zone

Avant Garde Previewer for Avalonia is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Avant Garde is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Non-code Assets

Images and non-code assets are not subject to GPL.

Avant Garde Project Logo: Copyright (C) Andy Thomas, 2022. Button and file icons: Copyright (C) Andy Thomas, 2022. Josefin Sans: Santiago Orozco, SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

All other copyright and trademarks are property of respective owners.