Embedding avalonia UserControl in a native win32 program

[mem0c]

I'd like to use avalonia in a mixed managed native/managed program.
The program is a native win32 program and hosts the dotnet engine.
Given a UserControl and a parent HWND I would like to create the user control and make it a child window of HWND.
In the past I successfully did this with WinForms and Wpf.

Can anyone please give some pointers ? or example I can look at ?

[thevortexcloud]

I don't think you can do this easily. Avalonia expects to draw to a canvas. So you can't just get a pointer to a single control like you can with winforms, you need to draw the entire canvas.

I am not sure sure what the best way to do this would be, but you could implement your own custom backend. EG see something like the Godot backend.

https://github.com/MrJul/Estragonia

Alternatively I think you can embed an native application window inside a Avalonia application window. But I can't say I have tried it.

Someone else may better ideas though.

[mem0c]

I'm guessing conceptually this isn't very different than hosting an avalonia UserControl inside WinForms. (since winforms is just a wrapper on top of win32).

Looking at the code, I'm confused by how the WinFormsAvaloniaControlHost demo works: it needs a UserControl, an EmbeddableControlRoot (whose content cannot be a Window), an App instance which internally needs a Window.

[maxkatz6]

I don't think you can do this easily. Avalonia expects to draw to a canvas.

You can create an embeddable root and use it as a canvas. Such scenario is well supported in Avalonia.

[maxkatz6]

Looking at the code, I'm confused by how the WinFormsAvaloniaControlHost demo works: it needs a UserControl, an EmbeddableControlRoot (whose content cannot be a Window), an App instance which internally needs a Window.

Yes, you need EmbeddableControlRoot.
Yes, you need to setup App instance and UI thread too (by calling one of AppBuilder.Setup** methods).
No, App doesn't require a Window.