Is it possible to compile Xamarin for Android from Linux CLI?

Issue

We have an Android app that is compiled with custom information according to each client. At the moment, our app is built using Ionic, so when a user asks to download the APK, we automatically modify its source code accordingly, compile the app and provide the download from the client. All of this is done in a Linux server.

We now want to leave Ionic and use Xamarin for our new version. But we need to achieve the same process that we had before. So is it possible to compile Xamarin for Android from Linux just like we do ionic build android?

Solution

The short answer : Yes, but....

Linux not a currently supported environment by the distributed pre-packaged version of Xamarin.Android from Microsoft/Xamarin, but using the open-sourced code, you can build Xamarin.Android on Linux and then use xabuild on your Xamarin.Android projects.

Note: You are on your own in terms of setup, environment, bugs, etc... (but the open source code is being built on an Ubuntu build server, see the Github repo for details)

Github repo: https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-android

Ref: https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=142

New Ref: https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-android/blob/master/Documentation/workflow/UsingYourBuild.md

Old Ref: https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-android#linux-build-notes

Answered By - SushiHangover