Proposal: Namespace override at the project level.

[Noemata]

Proposal: Namespace override at the project level.

Summary

To ease the process of migrating UWP code to WinUI, having a namespace override at the project level would allow for scenarios that required zero source code level changes when maintaining common code that targets both UWP and WinUI. This mechanism would be useful in other scenarios also.

Rationale

• Ease the process of migrating code from UWP to WinUI
• Simplify code maintenance that requires common code between UWP and WinUI
• Increase the likelihood of project migration from UWP to WinUI

The mechanism would look something like this at the project level:

...
    <ApplicationManifest>app.manifest</ApplicationManifest>
    <Platforms>x86;x64;arm64</Platforms>
    <RuntimeIdentifiers>win10-x86;win10-x64;win10-arm64</RuntimeIdentifiers>
...
    <NameSpaceOverrides>
	Windows.UI.Composition = Microsoft.UI.Composition
	Windows.UI.Xaml.Navigation = Microsoft.UI.Xaml.Navigation
    </NameSpaceOverrides>

[asklar]

For C++ projects, you can use this: https://www.nuget.org/packages/XamlStraddle/

[Noemata]

@asklar , C++ is awesome, you can morph it to do your bidding. My favorite example of this is a package that makes C++ look like Cobol. I doubt namespace swapping will get much attention on the C# side given WinUI is also targeting UWP. It would be a cool feature to have. Surprising we don't yet have this sort of capability in C#.