Jérôme Laban on Multi-Platform DevOps - Episode 123

This week, Jeffrey is joined by Jérôme Laban, CTO of the open-source Uno Platform, and a 4x recipient of the Microsoft MVP award.   The Uno Platform is a framework that aims to improve the development cycle of cross-platform apps using Windows, iOS, Android, and WebAssembly using Mono and Xamarin. It is also Open Source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub.   In this conversation, Jérôme shares their DevOps success story and all of the thought that went into creating a complete DevOps environment for a platform that targets a multitude of computing environments. He also shares details of its creation, what developers should know about it, gives advice, and shares invaluable resources.   Topics of Discussion: [:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes. [1:02] About The Azure DevOps Podcast and Jeffrey’s offer to speak at virtual user groups. [1:10] Clear Measure is hiring! Be sure to check out the link in the show notes. [1:33] About today’s guest, Jérôme Laban! [1:49] Jeffrey welcomes Jérôme to the podcast. [1:58] About Jérôme’s career background and what has led him to become the CTO of the Uno Platform. [4:03] Regarding the Uno Platform, what should people be looking for now vs. what they should be looking for in the future for cross-platform and mobile development? [8:00] Jérôme walks listeners through the creation of the Uno Platform. [13:44] Jérôme elaborates on the design of the Uno Platform and the branching strategy that they put in place at the front-end. [15:08] The Uno Platform has enabled automated builds upon pull request creation. How many tests are they able to fit into that and what duration does that pull request build take on the feature branch? [16:28] Is there a short cycle build for smaller issues such as a spelling error? [17:41] Jérôme explains what happens in the environment after the pull request is accepted and merges into master. [20:25] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast’s sponsor: Clear Measure. [20:56] Do you fully deploy to target platforms on the pull request build process? [22:08] Jérôme discusses Calculator.Platform.Uno. [24:11] Jérôme received the codebase for the calculator from the Windows team. Did he also receive the test cases for it as well? And did those port over? [25:28] With Uno, will WinForms applications and WPF desktop applications just be able to be “slid” into WebAssembly and URL launched? [27:09] With Uno, how many different types of test frameworks are there and what are they? [30:24] Is the state-of-the-art for web still Selenium? What about mobile? [31:05] Does the Xamarin UI test cover Android and iOS? [31:13] What would you use for UI testing for WebAssembly? [32:38] If people are interested in this cross-platform UI testing do they need to use Uno Platform? [33:33] For developers that are developing new applications now, what technologies and frameworks should they be investing in and which should they be letting go as we look ahead into the future? [36:13] Jeffrey thanks Jérôme for joining the podcast. [36:45] Where to get in touch with Jérôme and learn more about the Uno Platform.   Mentioned in this Episode: Azure DevOps Clear Measure (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook! Jeffrey Palermo’s Youtube Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! The Azure DevOps Podcast’s Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow Uno Platform Uno Platform Discord Community @UnoPlatform on Twitter Jérôme Laban’s Twitter @jlaban Jérôme Laban’s Blog Blazor .NET 5.0 NuGet Xamarin Calculator.Platform.Uno Selenium GitVersion Mergify   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.