How to properly update Monogame with a Github PR - windows-phone-8

Question

Heey,
I got a little problem. The current Monogame 3.2 build available hasn't got a working template for Windows Phone 8. This will result into a black screen and a non working app. So I went onto their git hub and found the issue https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/pull/2089 and someone who fixed it and posted a Pull request.
The problem now is I have close to zero experience with building my own version or editing project template files. I got some common knowledge and started to delve into this all and already tried copying the template files to my visual studio files and building projects and throwing around the new .DLL but it all doesn't want to work properly. I started to work with the older template but I need the new version due to proper support for landscape in windows phone 8 that we need to utilize for our game.
Now is my question if someone knows the right/proper way to do this. A short summing up from what to copy where will do.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Okay it took me some time but I figured out what to copy,build,set and run.
You download the .Zip or make a pull with your Github into an empty folder and when finished extract it.
In the map open the MonoGame.Framework or MonoGame.Framework.”your
target platform” which will startup visual studio.
Build the solution/project (don’t forget to build in ARM, x86 and
x64 if enabled and needed) and navigate to “Extracted
folder”/MonoGame.Framework/bin/”your targeted platform” at the same
time open a new explorer and navigate to your MonoGame installation
by default C:\Program Files (x86)\MonoGame\v3.0
Navigate in your extracted folder to your targeted platform and
build and copy the MonoGame.Framework.dll to the opposing C:\Program
Files (x86)\MonoGame\v3.0\Assemblies\”targeted platform”\”build”
Rebuild your Project/Solution
Gratz you now updated your MonoGame :)
This could fix your problem but it’s possible that you still get an error when initializing your app on your phone or emulator DXGI related.
If this occurs then follow these steps. The problem lies probably by your SharpDX.WP8.dll how to fix this? In my case download and install the newest SharpDX http://sharpdx.org/download/ you could also look further how to only download the SharpDX.WP8.dll & .winmd!
Navigate to your SharpDX install (by default C:\Program Files
(x86)\SharpDX) navigate further to
Bin\DirectX11_1-“platform”-“build”\ and copy the SharpDX.WP8.dll and
.winmd to C:\Program Files
(x86)\MonoGame\v3.0\Assemblies\WindowsPhone\”build”
Rebuild your Project/Solution (if this still doesn't work you may
need to manually add the references again to SharpDX.WP8.winmd for
both builds)
So if it’s alright this should fix most issues but there is one left. Between MonoGame 3.0.x and 3.2 the project template of a windows phone game has changed but this didn't went well in the code. So we’re now going to update the project template of our Visual Studio.
Go back to your extracted Monogame map and head into the folder
“ProjectTemplates”\”your visual studio version”\WindowsPhone
Select all files and create a .Zip (could be done by the integrated
windows option “Send To”) make sure when you open the .Zip you will
immediately see all the files and they aren't nested into a folder
inside the .Zip
Navigate to C:\Users\”your PC name”\Documents\Visual Studio
201X\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\MonoGame and copy your
just created .Zip and overwrite the existing file.
You may have to follow these steps if you use different version of Visual Studio because of the lack of support for XNA inside VS2013.
Now you should've fixed any possible problem. If your project still gives errors try to recreate a new one (this would now use the new updated template you just copy pasted and would work) If this still doesn't work than please post what goes wrong but this all should do! These instructions should also work for all other platforms (at least which you could build of course)

Answer 2

Pretty easy to do pull it in to your own version.
Follow these steps:
Fork the Monogame repository
Clone your version to your local machine
Find the repository of the fixed code.
In a command prompt, move to your MonoGame folder, and pull the changes in using this line on your machine. (the branch is most likely master)
git pull http://github.com/other/repo branch_name
Once you have the pull request pulled into your local branch, just build it using Visual Studio.
You can also follow these steps if you think you'll be doing this often.
https://help.github.com/articles/syncing-a-fork

Answer 3

For some reason MrME, I couldn't get your solution to work because of some missing SharpDX reference which REFUSED to be added manually. While your solution may be valid I would like to present an alternative if you have the patience to transfer the code to a Monogame 3.2 project and are still getting the black screen:
Set the DrawingSurface to a DrawingSurfaceBackgroundGrid in the GamePage.xaml. Full details are found in the commented explanation at the bottom of the GamePage.xaml file.
Source: https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/issues/2081