Assemblies Available on Each Platform

Table 15.1 lists the default assembly references that are available to each of the different class libraries. Most of these are available across platforms, and others are just available for MonoTouch and Mono for Android. For example, System.Core and System.Xml are supported on all three platforms. So is every method available on each profile? Sadly, this is not the case.

Table 15.1 Assembly Availability on Mobile Platforms

Although some assemblies are not included in the profile for a specific platform, such as System.Json, you can still use this assembly by directly referencing it from the Silverlight assemblies. The final section of this chapter has an example.

There is a disconnect between platforms because certain things are either restricted or simply unavailable on the targeted platform. If you plan to write code to target multiple platforms, you need to be aware of this. For example, let's focus on the File class in the System.IO namespace, which is part of the mscorlib assembly.