A Xamarin app can essentially be created by using one of two code-sharing strategies:
- As a shared project
- The .NET Standard library
The first choice, a shared project, creates a project that is essentially a linked copy of each file in it. The files exist in one common place and are linked in at build time. This means that we cannot determine the runtime when writing the code and we can only access the APIs that are available on each target platform. It does allow us to use conditional compilations, which can be useful in certain circumstances, but can also be confusing to someone who reads the code later on. Going for the shared project option may also be a bad choice as it locks our code to specific platforms.
We will use the second choice, the .NET Standard library. This is, of course, a matter of choice and both ways will work. With a little imagination, you can still follow along with this chapter, even if you select the shared project option.
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