Below are some (probably harsh) feedback on my experience using the Tizen for .NET tools with my v4.0 TV.
- I always have to do a clean rebuild to get the app to to update, otherwise it just builds but then runs the old previous-deployed version. I wasted so much time wondering why my changes weren't reflected.
- F5 debugging doesn't work. It only works without the debugger attached which makes it near impossible to build any serious apps, as there's no way to step through code and understand why something is or isn't working.
- All the Tizen tooling doesn't work on high-dpi screens. Most buttons and text is clipped because it fails to correctly scale for high-dpi. Most laptops are high-dpi today and many use 4K monitors, so it's basically unusable on a modern monitor.
- When deploying apps, there's no app icon to pin to smarthub either. I can only launch apps via Visual Studio. This makes it hard to do longer-term day-to-day testing by just starting the app directly from the TV, and takes the fun away from any hobbyists. Apparently you can only do it iwth the v5.0 emulator, but if you run the emulator you might as well just launch from VS. It completely defeats the purpose. https://developer.tizen.org/forums/tizen-.net/smart-hub-tizen-4.0-tv-.net-app and https://developer.tizen.org/comment/28679#comment-28679
- The certificate tools doesn't work any longer unless you set your PCs date back a month. And even that it doesn't really work as I can't get the device manager to detect I created a certificate.
- Error messages are often useless, where error message will just say "Closed" and clicking details will then just tell you "closed closed" twice or something otherwise unusable.
- Tooling relies on the JDK with no support for the OpenJDK which is problematic for most businesses with the recent change in licensing.
- Tooling is completely broken in VS2019. VSIX declares it's supported, but the manifest then takes dependency on the VS2017 editor component. I tried fixing the manifest manually, but then it'll fail in the property panel and can't deploy. https://github.com/Samsung/vs-tools-cps/issues/3
- When I go to try and install emulators, no emulators are found to download.
- It doesn't look like you can actually deploy any .NET apps to the store: https://developer.tizen.org/forums/tizen-.net/what-future-tizen.net
- There's not a single sample showing how to build a TV Video streaming app. I mean isn't that the #1 scenario for TV apps? I found an old Channel9 video showing how it's done, and it was overly complex requiring you to create custom Xamarin.Forms renderers, and the source code was not avaiable for download anywhere. https://developer.tizen.org/forums/tizen-.net/media-player-custom-renderer
- Side loading apps was for whatever reason (apparently some bullshit story about security) disabled, yet again reducing the possibility for more wide-spread testing of beta-releases.
- .NET Forum doesn't seem to have much helpful activity from Samsung.
- The VS tooling hasn't seen any changes since it was first checked in 7 months ago: https://github.com/Samsung/vs-tools-cps
Bottom line is that quality issues with the tooling and the overall developer experience, all these bugs makes it so bad, I can't recommend anyone using Tizen.NET for developing apps for your TV at this point. Considering this is now a year past the tools initially shipped, I'm getting the feeling this was already dead on arrival, and it's a waste of time to try and use it (but please do prove me wrong).
