After a long silence, Microsoft has finally decided to announce that Project Astoria bridge will no longer be supported, requesting developers who wish to port Android apps to Windows 10 to use Xamarin instead.
For those who do not know, Project Astoria was part of Microsoft’s “Universal Windows Platform Bridges” program that was announced at Build 2015. The main purpose of Project Astoria was to allow developers to port Android apps to Universal Windows Platform apps. However, while the various bridges were still being promoted, Project Astoria was left behind. This eventually culminated in Windows 10 Mobile build 10549, where the build did not include the Android subsystem that was present in previous build. Furthermore, the forums for it had gone silent as well.
Microsoft has since issued a statement with regards to the future of Project Astoria. According to the statement, Microsoft’s decision to discontinue Project Astoria is due to feedback from developers that “having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing”. Microsoft would also go on to state that developers who wish to continue porting apps from Android to Windows should look into Xamarin instead.
This Xamarin in question is a company that aids in cross-platform development of mobile applications. Just recently, Microsoft has managed to acquire the company, although the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft has promised that they will go into more detail on the remaining Bridges, Xamarin and the Universal Windows Platform at this year’s Build.
Source: Neowin
