Shared Project option totally gone from the Xamarin.Forms project menu in Visual Studio 2019?

I work with Xamarin.Forms in Visual Studio since a few years, and updated my IDE recently (VS v. 16.3.7). Now I realized something is missing: the Shared Project option.

When i go through the Wizard to create a new project the question if I want to use Shared Project or PCL(or NetStandard) is now missing (see screenshot below from VS 2017)

I do know that you can still create a Shared Project and add an iOS and an Android project manually, but this is just too cumbersome. My question really is: Is there a reason why Microsoft went on to push the PCL/NetStandard above the Shared Project strategy?

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I am specially confused about this decision since already back in 2016 @miguel.de.icaza declared his favorite option (for most cases) was the Shared Project strategy:

https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2016/Jan-22.html

For me, the PCL is just too cumbersome for most uses. It is like using a canon to kill a fly. It imposes too many limitations (limited API surface), forces you to jump through hoops to achieve some very basic tasks.

I have installed VS 2017 15.9.14, on this version, Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) are deprecated. You could use .NET Standard instead. On VS 2019, the default is .NET Standard.

On Microsoft document, MS recommend .NET Standard 2.0 libraries over Portable Class Libraries. For more, please refer to the MS docs. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/app-fundamentals/code-sharing

My question really is: Is there a reason why Microsoft went on to push the PCL above the Shared Project strategy?

For MS announcement, PCL is deprecated, you could not find that when you create the project. You could create the Shared project by File > New > Project > Shared Project template.

For more details, you could check the link below. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/app-fundamentals/shared-projects?tabs=windows

Updated:

Is there a reason why Microsoft went on to push the >NetStandard< above the Shared Project strategy?".

For the old version of VS 2017, .Net Standard is an option of Shared Project strategy.For the latest version of VS, MS use .Net Standard as the default for Sharing Strategy.

Is there any doc where MS states why Shared Project is now deprecated/not available in the Xamarin.Forms project wizard?

PCL is deprecated. Shared Project is still in use, in my answer, I provide the second link about how to create the shared project.