android - Latest Xamarin on latest VS 2019 - it is not able to generate working APK files at all

Question

On the same PC, in July 2020 I developed Xamarin app and tested it on my SGS6 smartphone (with Android 7.0) - it was working fine. Then I saved sources and wrote small how-to-build documentation.

Now I need to fix some small bugs in this project and run it on the same device. The problem is - during this time I installed updates for VS 2019 (16.8.4). And now - it is not able to generate working APK files at all. :-(

So, the same PC, the same device, the same app, the same Android SDK - but for all APK files it reports "app not installed", "package corrupt error".

I tried to play with project options in VS - no way. I tested with all possible combinations. I tried to create new simple Xamarin forms app - no way. All APK files do not work!

Any ideas? Does it mean that Xamarin is going down and we should run from it as fast as possible? Or is there a chance to reanimate it somehow?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65925338/latest-xamarin-on-latest-vs-2019-it-is-not-able-to-generate-working-apk-files

Answer 1

If a new sample project doesn't work for you, it sounds like your Xamarin setup is corrupted. Try to update Xamarin.Android to the latest version and update pending Android SDK components updates (if any).

Also, if you try to install your newly generated package on top of previously deployed to the device package, and the package was corrupted, try to uninstall the package from the device completely before trying to deploy the new version. If the app is not in the list, I'd still check the installed packages for corrupted entry (it could be missing in the list of apps but a list of packages can still reflect the package).