How to create IPA package on Windows from Visual Studio 2019 when successfully paired to MAC

Issue

I have read the following documentation on setting up and building iOS apps from Visual Studio 2019 on a Windows machine,

• Pair to Mac for Xamarin.iOS development
• Introduction to Xamarin.iOS for Visual Studio
• IPA Support in Xamarin.iOS
• Free provisioning for Xamarin.iOS apps

It seems there is tons of critical information missing even after spending days reading and researching on this. When I attempt to build the iOS project is succeeds and shows

Pair to Mac is not connected, so the build will be performed offline. To do a full build please connect and try again.

in the output window. This makes some sense since the documentation clearly states you must have an active connection to a MAC machine. I then open the remote device dialog and click the connect button.

I am now successfully connected to my MAC build machine that has XCode, Mono, etc installed on it. However, this is a modal dialog! No other functionality in Visual Studio is accessible via the UI while this window is open. The fact this is not mentioned anywhere is mind boggling. At this point are you suppose to run the build command from a cmd or powershell? If so, how do I know the command string VS 2019 is running behind the scenes? In general, what is the point of visual studio at all if it allows me to pair to a mac but then prevents you from using the IDE to perform any build functions?

Solution

I have figured out the solution for this and its extremely simple. I can't decide if it's stupidity on my part, a terrible and confusing way to present a UI, or a combination of both.

Just select the "X" icon in the upper right-hand corner and close the dialog and you will remain connected.

You can easily confirm that you are still paired to the mac by hovering over this icon in the visual studio toolbar

Answered By - After_Sunset