Absolute Navigation hack for Android results in an extra Window causing other side effects

[John Bijsterbosch]

When using absolute navigation this results (at least on Android) in a 2nd window being added. This should not be the case I guess?

After researching the code, I've found an Android hack for absolute navigation which is causing this (in PageNavigationService.DoPush() at line 913).

Reproduction steps:

1. Open the Prism.Maui demo app
2. Replace the OnAppearing() implementation for:

public async void OnAppearing()
{
    await Task.Delay(3000);

    await _navigationService.CreateBuilder()
        .AddNavigationSegment<RootPageViewModel>()
        .UseAbsoluteNavigation()
        .NavigateAsync();

    await Task.Delay(10000);

    var windowsCount = Application.Current?.Windows.Count;
}

3. Run the code and check/debug windowsCount (it is 2 where it shouldn't)

After changing the PageNavigationService, removing the Android hack it seems not to happen. Perhaps the .NET MAUI bug is resolved in the stable release?

@dansiegel do you have a (unit) test/scenario where this hack was needed for? Could you perhaps validate removing this hack is possible here? I'll create a pull request for the code change so you are able to validate this.

[Pavel Anpin]

original issue in question dotnet/maui#7275 was resolved, could the hack be safely removed now?

[Emil Møller Lind]

I'd love to this be done too, as we currently can't use Absolute Navigation successfully.

[Dan Siegel]

the navigation hack has been removed for .NET 7... NOTE: You will need to update your application to inherit from PrismApplication to handle the initial navigation event.