Difference between Caliburn and Caliburn Micro and how to choose a framework?

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I have been looking into developing a new MVVM WPF desktop application and have shortlisted Caliburn and Caliburn.Micro for the same.

I especially like the auto binding properties/methods/View-VMs that you get in Caliburn.

I have previously worked with WPF/MVVM using PRISM (with Unity for DI/IoC). My requirements are for a small to mid-size, WPF application, nothing fancy. We don't see any need for Regions or IOC or DI at the moment, but from what I have seen, it does seem to provide support to enable all of these features.

  1. However, something I can't really find is the differences between Caliburn and Caliburn Micro. Can someone help shape my opinion to make a decision between Caliburn and Caliburn Micro, preferably someone who has exposure to either or both ?

  2. Also, what could be the foreseeable challenges or hurdles for someone moving from PRISM to Caliburn, especially in terms of support and an active knowledgebase or active developer community/user base ?

  3. Would something like MVVM Light better suit us ? Since it gives us the familiarity with PRISM and almost the same user base and support as PRISM. Anything that Caliburn misses out on as compared to MVVM Light ? How would you make a call between the 2 ? Or rather any of the other exciting Open source frameworks out there like Cinch and Catel ?

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wpfmvvmmvvm-lightcaliburn.microcaliburn

1 Answers

0
votes

Each fx has it's cons and pros, and all answers are highly likely to be subjective. One of the pros of Catel is that you get all these components for free (which are all based on Catel):

http://opensource.wildgums.com/

I use them all the time for building fairly large, maintainable WPF applications.