Microsoft posts guide for iOS developers to get started with Project Islandwood

Microsoft is busy trying to lure iOS developers to the Windows ecosystem with Project Islandwood, which has so far been a success as an open-source project on GitHub. Now, the company has published on its MSDN blog, a detailed starting up guide for new developers who wish to port their apps using Visual Studio.

Project Islandwood, better known as Windows Bridge for iOS, is a tool for porting iOS apps to Windows with little to no modifications. Although there might be certain limitations in the ported apps, Microsoft seems to be headed in the right direction with the tool, and wants more developers to bring their apps to Windows.

The blog post reveals the basic steps involved in porting an app project created for the iPad using Xcode 7.1 on a Mac, to a Visual Studio 2015 solution on Windows 10. Once the initial conversion is done, the developers can continue to code using Objective-C, and release a Windows package of their app.

Although the steps are quite straightforward, moving to a new development environment does involve some getting used to, and Microsoft has taken care of that as well, with a bunch of tutorial videos on MSDN Channel 9.

To dive into Windows development using Objective-C, developers can grab the latest build of the Windows Bridge for iOS and Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition for free.

Source: MSDN