OS Onboarding doc

[richlander]

Is there a doc that describes how to onboard a new Android or iOS version (for build or test) in this repo?

We've started writing such docs to make ourselves more efficient and make such tasks more easily repeatable.

Here are some other efforts:

• Add doc on OS onboarding runtime#112026
• Create an OS onboarding doc aspnetcore#60281

A new Android version is coming soon. Perhaps we use that as the forcing function and example to write a doc if one doesn't exist.

[PureWeen]

Not currently, I know we're moving towards shifting that work out of this repository so I would want to make sure we aren't going to create docs for something we are already planning to obsolete.

Is this an agentic effort?

[richlander]

I don't know how we'd be shifting this work out of this repo. I may be missing some context. I assume this repo is one of the key ones for testing Android and iOS.

I don't think there is a connection to agents.

[PureWeen]

I was just curious if there is a broader context here for the initiative. That broader context seems like it's usually AI so probably just jumped there too fast. :-)

The simplest answer is that we add a number to either of these lists and that will now add devices to our CI

https://github.com/dotnet/maui/blob/main/eng/pipelines/device-tests.yml#L128-L129

Issues with the .NET Android/iOS SDK aren't usually related to new OS versions but typically related to SDK bumps themselves. Things that dotnet/sdk broke, especially as we start ramping up on major bump areas, things that aren't really related to OS onboarding.

Most of the key testing for new OS versions I'd say happen here during major .net releases
https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-macios
https://github.com/dotnet/android

And then as we ingest those previews, we provide feedback. Yhe issues here are usually more general sdk breaks vs new OS's

I don't know how we'd be shifting this work out of this repo.

I might have a misunderstanding of what's available to us but I think we're hoping to reuse helix bits wherever we can. Try to remove all our "in house" mechanisms in this area.

[richlander]

The broader context is that many people (including me) are always confused about what to do when we need to add support for a new OS and easy OS family is different. Writing it all down is intended to make us more efficient. No one asked me to do that. I'm just at the end of my rope on the topic so doing something productive.

Yes, using Helix is all good.

Perhaps we can add support for Android 16 together and write it down as we go? It's not even clear to me which team is ultimately accountable for this.

Related: dotnet/runtime#112493

[PureWeen]

This feels like something that's more relevant for

https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-macios
https://github.com/dotnet/android

@rolfbjarne @dalexsoto
@jonathanpeppers @jonpryor

MAUI is really just an sdk consumer, so by the time it reaches us the OS has already been onboarded.
We don't really have a role in that process

[richlander]

Got it. That makes sense.

I'll close this issue and open matching ones in those repos. I appreciate the re-direction.

[jonathanpeppers]

The Android doc is here, but might be slightly out of date (it mentions Xamarin):

• https://github.com/dotnet/android/blob/main/Documentation/workflow/HowToAddNewApiLevel.md

/cc @jpobst if there are other docs.