Xamarin Studio Addin for BlueStacks

Use the BlueStacks Android Player as a debug target for your Xamarin Studio Android projects.

Xamarin's My Shoppe app runnning in debug mode on BlueStacks

My Shoppe

Whack (ActionScript / Starling) compiled using with Xamarin.Android & PlayScript and running on BlueStacks. Game runs at 60 fps on BlueStack without breaking a sweat...

Whack GIF

Note: Windows is not currently enabled in this project, please post your vote

Why:

It is a fully licensed Android client:
- Play Store access
- Google Apps available (Maps, Mail, etc...)
- Google Play services
100+ million BlueStacks' end-users (per company statement)
BlueStacks is a really fast Android client
BlueStacks does OpenGL ES based apps really well.

BlueStacks = Android API 19 Device

When activated as an ADB debug device within Xamarin Studio, BlueStacks will be listed under "Physical Devices" and displayed as "Samsumg SM-G900F (API 19)"

Andriod Project Build Setting:

This public version of the Addin does not currently automatically toggle the Use shared Mono runtime on/off during activation. You will need to do this manually otherwise you will get a deployment failure when you try to deploy a debug version of your app.

Xamarin Studio - Addin Manager

Xamarin Studio - Tools Menu

The menu item for the BlueStacks activation will change state based on the following:

Is BlueStacks installed?
Is an Android project currently open and selected?
Is BlueStacks currently running?
Is BlueStacks available, or not, as a debug device?

Active BlueStacks as a debug device:

Remove BlueStacks as a debug device:

A Xamarin.Android project is not open and active:

Note: The BlueStacks menu item will be disabled

BlueStacks is not installed:

Select the menu item to go to BlueStacks to download their Player.

Note: BlueStacks does not have to exist in the typical /Applications or ~/Applications install locations. As long as OS-X Finder's location service can find it, it can be used.