Fix Navigation for Native AOT with Source Generator #1627

[ghost1372]

Add a source generator to automatically generate the NavigationPageMappings class, which maps page types to unique IDs. This eliminates the need to use reflection, such as Type.GetType(pageString). #1627

Before:

string pageString = $"{pageRoot}{item.UniqueId}Page";
Type? pageType = Type.GetType(pageString);

After:
NavigationPageMappings.PageDictionary.TryGetValue(item.UniqueId, out Type? pageType);

Description

Motivation and Context

How Has This Been Tested?

Screenshots (if appropriate):

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

[ghost1372]

Hi
@marcelwgn
@niels9001
can you review this pr?
tnx

[marcelwgn]

Why did we need to change the unique id for this?

[marcelwgn]

Intentional change?

[marcelwgn]

Thank you for working on this, great job!

General question, do we need to include the fully qualified type name? I think for simplicity we can get away with just having the type name itself as key instead of having to prepend "WinUIGallery..." everwhere.

[Zakariathr22]

I have a few questions:

• What value would Native AOT bring to the Gallery, and is it actually necessary? Please correct me if I am mistaken, but my understanding is that Native AOT becomes truly beneficial primarily for very large applications with extensive functionality, where startup time and performance are critical.

• Is Microsoft planning to make Native AOT adoption easier? At the moment, I see many pull requests relying on workarounds and complex, fragile code paths just to make it work, often without achieving a stable or satisfactory result.

• Is there any official guide or step-by-step documentation for implementing Native AOT in existing WinUI applications, or should we consider creating such documentation ourselves?