Cross-Platform Development with the Portable Class Library • • 11 minutes to read • Contributors • • • • • • In this article The.NET Framework Portable Class Library project type in Visual Studio helps you build cross-platform apps and libraries for Microsoft platforms quickly and easily. Portable class libraries can help you reduce the time and costs of developing and testing code. Use this project type to write and build portable.NET Framework assemblies, and then reference those assemblies from apps that target multiple platforms such as Windows and Windows Phone. Even after you create a Portable Class Library project in Visual Studio and start developing it, you can change the target platforms. Visual Studio will compile your library with the new assemblies, which helps you identify the changes you need to make in your code. This article discusses app development in Visual Studio, but Microsoft also provides Portable Class Library reference assemblies that you can use to develop apps and libraries with other tools such as Xamarin.

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You can use these apps and libraries on any.NET Framework-based runtime on non-Microsoft platforms. For more information about the reference assemblies, see the blog entry. To download the assemblies, see in the Microsoft Download Center.

For more information about how to use the assemblies with Xamarin, see the blog entry. Visual Studio provides templates to help you develop with the Portable Class Library. Depending on which version of Visual Studio you're using, available templates and menus may vary from those described in this article. Warning includes updates to the Portable Class Library templates. If you have an earlier version of Visual Studio and Visual Studio 2013 installed on the same computer, and you then install Update 2, the changes to the Target Framework choices will be applied to both versions of Visual Studio. In this topic: Visual Studio support Visual Studio support for the Portable Class Library depends on the version of Visual Studio you're using.

In some cases, you'll have everything you need, and in other cases, you'll need to install additional items, as shown in the following table. Joymii Hot After. Visual Studio SKU Support for creating a Portable Class Library Visual Studio 2010, Professional, Premium, or Ultimate Yes, when you install the. Visual Studio Express 2010 versions No. Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium, or Ultimate Yes. For phone support, install the. Visual Studio Express 2012 versions No. Visual Studio 2013 Professional, Premium, or Ultimate Yes.

For Windows Phone 8.1 support, install. Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Yes, when you install the, which includes Update 2, or add. Creating a Portable Class Library project To create a Portable Class Library, you should use one of the templates provided in Visual Studio.

Create a new project, and in the New Project dialog box, under Templates, select your target language (C# or Visual Basic), and then select one of the platforms you want to target. You can select additional platforms in the next step. In Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, you can choose the Class Library (Portable) template for your chosen language and platform to create a Portable Class Library. You'll see this template for the following platforms: • Store Apps • Windows Desktop • Silverlight If you want to create a library to target Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 in C#, you can choose Store apps, and then choose Class Library (Portable for Universal Apps). This template automatically selects Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 as targets. If you create a library that targets only Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 8.1, you can change the target platforms and add platforms later. If you're using Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2013 without Update 2, you create a new project and choose the Portable Class Library template under Visual C# or Visual Basic.