WinForms Designer Support

In Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1, there is no project template for generating .NET Core 3 WinForms projects. If I instead run on the command line:

dotnet new winforms -o winforms_core_test

a project is created successfully. I can then open the generated .csproj file in VS2019. But the WinForms designer doesn’t seem to be available. Typically the right-click context menu shows “view designer”, but it is missing, and shift+f7 after opening the code doesn’t work either:

On a standard WinForms project, the Designer.cs file is typically shown as a child of the form source code, and the designer is available on the context menu:

Is there any way to use the designer with .NET Core 3, or is it planned in the future?

[Zonciu]

Before VS2019 supports .Net Core WinForms & WPF Designer, we still be able to use this trick. If Designer reports crash exception, just rebuild your project, or rebuild your project and then restart VS2019.

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I found an easy way to make VS2019 support net core 3 WinForm & WPF: netcore3-winform-designer netcore3-wpf-designer

Design in .NET Framework target, publish in .NET Core 3.

WinForm

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>
    <TargetFrameworks>net472;netcoreapp3.0</TargetFrameworks>
    <UseWindowsForms>true</UseWindowsForms>
    <LangVersion>7.3</LangVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup Condition=" '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net472' ">
    <Reference Include="System" />
    <Reference Include="System.Core" />
    <Reference Include="System.Xml.Linq" />
    <Reference Include="System.Data.DataSetExtensions" />
    <Reference Include="Microsoft.CSharp" />
    <Reference Include="System.Data" />
    <Reference Include="System.Deployment" />
    <Reference Include="System.Drawing" />
    <Reference Include="System.Net.Http" />
    <Reference Include="System.Windows.Forms" />
    <Reference Include="System.Xml" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup Condition=" '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net472' ">
    <!-- add From files to here to enable designer -->
    <Compile Update="Form1.cs">
      <SubType>Form</SubType>
    </Compile>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

WPF

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>
    <TargetFrameworks>net472;netcoreapp3.0</TargetFrameworks>
    <UseWPF>true</UseWPF>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup Condition=" '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net472' ">
    <Reference Include="System" />
    <Reference Include="System.Data" />
    <Reference Include="System.Xml" />
    <Reference Include="Microsoft.CSharp" />
    <Reference Include="System.Core" />
    <Reference Include="System.Xml.Linq" />
    <Reference Include="System.Data.DataSetExtensions" />
    <Reference Include="System.Net.Http" />
    <Reference Include="System.Xaml">
      <RequiredTargetFramework>4.0</RequiredTargetFramework>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="WindowsBase" />
    <Reference Include="PresentationCore" />
    <Reference Include="PresentationFramework" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup Condition=" '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net472' ">
    <!-- add files to here to enable designer -->
    <Compile Update="App.xaml.cs">
      <DependentUpon>App.xaml</DependentUpon>
      <SubType>Code</SubType>
    </Compile>
    <Compile Update="MainWindow.xaml.cs">
      <DependentUpon>MainWindow.xaml</DependentUpon>
      <SubType>Code</SubType>
    </Compile>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

[RussKie]

A preview of the designer will be released as part of .NET 3.0 release in September 2019.