Wpf: Is this repo dead?

[GeraudFabien]

I remember asking that a few (years ago)[https://github.com/microsoft/xaml-standard/issues/230]. Seeing all the complain every time i read on somethinks about .net5 about the lack of activity here. I cannot resist to do it again.

There are no real update on master since September:

• Commit are just small .net version update and doc an small chuck of code that i believe are related to the CI (No real issue fix).

I understand that the team is focusing in WinUI or maui. And sincerly i preferred the team to work on MAUI than WPF or winform. But :

• The readme explain how to open Issue why?
• There is no link to explain to use WinUI and WPF is obsolete
• Why WinForm is way more supported i expect the opposite or at least the same.

To be clear i don't ask for more support i ask to know what's going on. Just be clear with the community. Just update the readme to point to WinUI and Lock the repo if you don't want new issue. Just update the readme and do a blog post.

We will add more tests in _2019 and 2020_, however, it will be a progressive process.

...

[Symbai]

Unofficially yes. Officially its the same as .NET Framework: "not dead". Which means, its dead in the way of no further development or improvements will be made but they are afraid of calling it "dead". If you see the commits over 1 year its mostly updating sub packages and changes from other repos.

Several month ago we heard video interviews that the WPF team should have dedicated working hours on doing reviews. Looking at pull requests being not reviewed for over a year now proofs the opposite.

Now you can say this might be because of WinUI or MAUI. But what about the, even more legacy, Winforms repo then? Its extremely active, always has been since its open sourced. My personal guess is that its because this repo is not maintained by the original WPF team. But whatever the real reason is, we will never hear a single official word to it.

Your best choice is doing the repo survey again and again and again and hope that your frustration will be heard by someone being responsible and willing to make a change.

[pjmlp]

@Symbai The real reason was already communicated on community calls over on YouTube. The team was merged with WinUI and created from zero, apparently everyone from the original team is gone, and the new team is very resource constrained so they don't manage to deliver more than a couple of fixes.

Now we can complain that instead of doing WPF, WinUI, MAUI, Blazor on Electron (what a bad idea!) they should focus on just having one UI-vnext framework, but after UWP failure, they don't seem to be able to decide what to do, each group talks differently about the "vision".

[Symbai]

apparently everyone from the original team is gone, and the new team is very resource constrained so they don't manage to deliver more than a couple of fixes.

This only shows how extremely bad this decision was. Why taking over such a huge and extremely popular project when you have absolutely no time to deal with it?!

1. More devs are using WPF than Winforms and especially than UWP and very very especially than Xamarin (on Windows desktop). So WPF is No. 1 for C# Windows desktop UI development. And WinUI is far, very far away from being a replacement. Its even behind UWP!
2. Why moving WPF to a completely new, possibly also non-C# experienced (WinUI comes from C++ I believe), team? Which
3. Is absolutely busy and unable to do anything more to this project

Nobody here complains about they not focusing on one UI-vNext framework. Other UI frameworks are kinda irrelevant. What people here complains about is the fact that they are not working together with this community. They are completely ignoring pull requests, even very very simple pull requests. They are not answering to questions nor issues. And after people have complained, they then told us

1. Its only because they are building up test enviroments, after they are finished they will start reviewing pull request. So we believed and patiently waited. Now after they built them they are still ignoring the whole community.
2. After we raised our words again, we were told that things will change. The team now would have dedicated working hours just to review pull requests. Yeah but no... the same pull requests made since WPF was open sourced are still not reviewed. Not. Even. A. Single. Word. On. Them.

But in the end we're driving around in circles. As long as this repo won't get a dedicated C# experienced team, it's just dead and the reason doesn't matter. The community cannot help. And developers don't have an alternative. MAUI is just on paper, WinUI is in unstable preview that brings only UWP wrappers currently. And Winforms is legacy. It is just as it it. But I'm not holding myself back to show my frustration about this situation because its the only thing I can do. And while I am repeating myself, Microsoft is known to fell terrible decisions but also Microsoft is also partly willing to learn and listen to feedback, when the feedback is loud enough.

[ClosetBugSlayer]

Maintaining WPF is objectively the right choice for the company. The trick is to figure out the politics behind it. Remember when Steve Sinofsky was the hired hit man for delivering the blow against WPF/Silverlight? Remember when they were cruelly taunting the XAML community that everything would be done in HTML and JavaScript? It was totally un-technical, un-necessary, and un-called for.

There is something about WPF that very bad people don't like and that is exactly why it should be pushed harder than ever. I bet Google is trying to take over the entire desktop with Chromium and I bet the brass at Microsoft are colluding in a way that deserves antitrust attention. I bet WinUI goes absolutely nowhere, just like acrylic "material theme". It's a red herring. YAWN.