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AvalonDock v5.0.0 — Biggest Release Since 2020 #560
Description
After years of incremental improvements and maintenance releases, I'm excited to announce that work on AvalonDock v5.0.0 has officially started.
This will be the biggest architectural and feature-focused release since 2020 and aims to modernize AvalonDock for the next generation of .NET desktop applications.
Planned Roadmap
-
Drop End-of-Life .NET Versions
AvalonDock v5 will remove support for all EOL .NET versions to simplify maintenance and fully embrace the modern .NET ecosystem. -
First-Class Dependency Injection Support
Native integration patterns for modern DI containers and application bootstrapping. -
First-Class MVVM Support
Improved MVVM architecture, cleaner bindings, better separation of concerns, and reduced code-behind requirements. -
Toggle Docking Manager
A new optional docking experience inspired by editors like VSCode and IntelliJ for fast panel toggling, lightweight workspace switching and modern developer workflow -
Architectural Cleanup
A major internal cleanup and refactoring effort is planned to improve maintainability and extensibility. -
Introduction of AvalonDock.Core
A new UI-agnostic core library containing the docking/layout engine as plain .NET code for easier testing, better separation between logic and UI and the foundation for future platform flexibility -
Serialization abstraction
No more glued xmlLayoutserializer. Bring your own serializer or use existing XML or the new JsonSerializer -
Additional VS Theme support
Adds the missing .vstheme support Embrace VS theme .vstheme file format #538 as well as a modern VS2022 Theme
More details and previews will follow during development. Feedback and ideas are very welcome.
Activity
[Feature] #560 - [Toggle] Fix red border, binding errors, and simplif…
[Feature] #560 - [Toggle] MVVM toolbox registration via DI with ITool…
[Feature] #560 - [UI] Vertical 3-dot options button and active-state …
[Feature] #560 - [UI] Restructure ToggleAnchorablePaneTitle with self…
[Fix] #560 - [UI] Load ToggleAnchorablePaneControlStyle via direct Re…
[Feature] #560 - [Theme] Add Arc theme ToggleAnchorablePaneControlSty…
lextm commentedon May 30, 2026
Congrats 🎉
While this is not going to hijack your great priorities on v5 release, I am happy to announce that I will publish a full WinUI/Uno Platform port of AvalonDock. So, soon this framework can go cross-platform on Windows/macOS/Linux when people decide to upgrade their WPF projects.
Currently, that code base is upon v4.47.1, but I will rebase soon and ensure compatibility with v5 while you drive things further according to your own roadmap.
One of my goals is to ensure maximum source code reuse, so whatever new features/bug fixes (like #538) come on one side can easily benefit the other. That means I will send you a few small pull requests focusing on refactoring and platform neutral design. Stay tuned.
sharpSteff commentedon May 31, 2026
@lextm Thanks. AvalonDock living on in Uno sounds really great! Feel free to create some PRs. I'm looking forward to them! I'm pretty sure your port will also benifit greatly from v5.
V5.0.0 (#564)
#560 [Refactor] Refactor Serialization stack to DTO-based and remove …
lextm commentedon Jul 4, 2026
@wieslawsoltes recently published his own WPF fork, which is cross-platform, and he tested AvalonDock. I was able to reproduce his success so soon will see what patches are needed to add in v5 to enable macOS and Linux drag/drop support.
It's going to be a lot easier than using UnoDock and Uno Platform, because most of your WPF code base remains the same.
sharpSteff commentedon Jul 4, 2026
Last year I tried out AvaloniaUI XPF and to get AvalonDock running on Linux, they send me this fork https://github.com/AvaloniaUIOU/AvalonDock
It worked pretty good. Those changes may come handy for a potential run on Linux/Macos
lextm commentedon Jul 4, 2026
@sharpSteff that's not going to work on the upcoming framework, as it uses XPF specific features. But it's OK. Other docking libraries and my work on UnoDock already reveal all native APIs needed, so the changes are clear and minimal.
sharpSteff commentedon Jul 4, 2026
@lextm I did not check the diff yet, but you are probably right.
sharpSteff commentedon Jul 6, 2026
@lextm I tried running @wieslawsoltes WPF on Ubuntu (minor adaptions needed in the build script) and compiled AvalonDock against it.
The results are crazy:
gaetandezeiraud commentedon Jul 6, 2026
It is a custom style? Very clean!
sharpSteff commentedon Jul 6, 2026
that's the relative new Theme http://nuget.org/packages/Dirkster.AvalonDock.Themes.Arc used in the AvalonDockCode-Sample App
lextm commentedon Jul 6, 2026
@sharpSteff Yes. Not surprised. I got SharpDevelop moving fast on macOS, too.
sharpSteff commentedon Jul 6, 2026
@lextm I had issue with AvalonEdit and it's WindowsForms dependencies. How did you solve that ?
lextm commentedon Jul 6, 2026
@sharpSteff Just applied the cross-platform tips I learned in UnoEdit back to AvalonEdit. You can check out this fork
https://github.com/lextudio/AvalonEdit
Jimex commentedon Aug 5, 2026
I'm really looking forward to this new version. Thanks for all the effort you've put into it! Do you happen to have an estimated release date you can share?
lextm commentedon Aug 5, 2026
@sharpSteff it might take a few months for LibreWPF to stabilize based on current observation, so maybe you just go ahead and release v5 for Windows only right now? The cross platform release can be v5.1.
sharpSteff commentedon Aug 12, 2026
✅