This year I decided to embark on the journey of developing a .Net Core style host builder for Xamarin. I had previously seen examples using the HostBuilder provided by the .Net Core framework. While this approach was perfectly fine and works as intended, I found myself wanting something a little more integrated with Xamarin. Enter Hostly, a framework that provides end-users with a custom Ihost tailored to Xamarin.Forms. It's as simple as running a few lines of code in your entry class (FormsAppCompatActivity in Android, or FormsApplicationDelegate in iOS):

new XamarinHostBuilder().UseApplication<App>()
.UsePlatform(this)
.Build()
.StartAsync();

Using Hostly opens up access to a rich set of useful features when developing a Xamarin app. A few of those being:

• Navigation Middleware
• Lifecycle Middleware (In progress)
• Dependency Injection
• EF.Core
• Hosted services

Try it out for yourself here