Moving Tizen Support Out of Main Repository · AvaloniaUI/Avalonia · Discussion #19721 (original) (raw)

We want to share an important update regarding Tizen support in Avalonia and our evolving approach to platform contributions.

Tizen support was generously contributed by @OmidID in #12151, and we're genuinely grateful for this significant effort to expand Avalonia's reach. The contribution represented a substantial amount of work and dedication to making Avalonia run on even more platforms, something we love to see!

However, we've encountered challenges maintaining this backend alongside our core platforms. Unlike other platforms that our team members use daily, Tizen has seen minimal adoption within our community, making it difficult to justify the maintenance burden.
Additionally, the Tizen .NET workload has introduced significant technical complications, including installation issues that interfere with unrelated workloads and now block our transition to .NET 10. The platform's tooling has proven to be a persistent source of build and development friction.

Given the low adoption and friction, we've decided to move Tizen support out of the main repository. The hope is that those interested in its development can independently maintain it, while we focus on ensuring the stability and quality of our core platforms.

Learning from this experience

This situation has highlighted an important lesson we've encountered before, notably with the DataGrid ported from Silverlight. Large, complex contributions, whether new platforms or major features, require a much higher bar for merging than we've previously applied. While we appreciate the enthusiasm and effort behind these contributions, accepting substantial contributions to the codebase without established long-term maintenance plans results in unmaintained technical debt.

Going forward, such contributions will need to demonstrate sustained maintenance commitment and proven stability as external packages before we consider merging them into the main repository.