XSharp Public Beta available for download

Details

Created: 28 February 2016

We are pleased to offer you the first public beta of XSharp (X#).

When we started this project we have promised a first beta version in the first quarter of 2016, and that has not been an empty promise!

You can download the beta now from this website for free. The only thing that we request from you is that you register yourself as user on our website.

Of course we would like to "warn" you that it is still a beta version of our product. It is not finished yet.

This beta version of the compiler supports the “Core” language, that means that VO & Vulcan specific datatypes such as DATE, ARRAY, USUAL, SYMBOL, FLOAT etc. are not supported yet.

The Visual Studio integration supports the Edit/Compile/Debug cycle. Only the source code editor is supported. Other editors, such as the WPF editor, Forms Editor and Resource editor are not supported yet.

The debugger may stop more often than you would expect.

Please note that this is an early build of the compiler. Some things will NOT work, you can be sure of this.

Please also read our other article about our Roadmap and support options.

On behalf of the XSharp Development team

Robert van der Hulst

Status Update

Details

Created: 19 February 2016

It is time for a quick status update:

• The first public Beta will be released in the coming week. Is is a little bit delayed because the flu epidemy has unfortunately also found its way to one of our team members.
• We will also publish a public Roadmap next week in which we will give you an impression of what you can expect from us in 2016. It is going to be an exciting year.
• We hope that you have already booked your ticket for the xBase.Future conference in April in Cologne. If not then please visit http://www.visualobjects.de/en/conference/ and book for the special early bird price which is valid until the end of this month.
  We have planned to demonstrate and release our version 1 product at that conference! More details about that will be in the roadmap. Of course this conference is also the perfect place to tell us what you would like to see added to X#.

On behalf of the team,

Robert van der Hulst

Dilemmas: when is code correct ?

Details

Created: 03 February 2016

In this Blog article I would like to share some of the dilemmas that we met when creating X#. Especially some dilemmas where we discovered that the VO/Vulcan compiler allowed things that other languages, such as C# and VB, did not allow.

Case 1

CLASS ParentClass
    VIRTUAL METHOD OnTest() AS STRING
        ? 'parent'
    RETURN 'parent'
END CLASS

CLASS ChildClass INHERIT ParentClass
    METHOD OnTest() AS STRING
        ? 'child'
    RETURN 'child'
END CLASS

FUNCTION Start() AS VOID
    LOCAL o AS ParentClass
    o:= ChildClass{ }
    ? o:OnTest() 
RETURN

When you compile this code without any "special" compiler options what would you expect ?

Alpha build 0.1.7 is now available for FOX subscribers

Details

Created: 31 January 2016

Another new build of X# has been released to our FOX subscribers. This build was mostly focused on making the compiler more compatible with the VO an Vulcan xBase language. Some of the changes are:

• The "ns" (add default namespace to classes without namespace) has been implemented
• The "vo3" compiler option (to make all methods virtual ) has been implemented
• Fixed an issue where the send operator on an expression between parentheses was not compiling properly
• Relational operators for strings (>, >=, <, <=) are now supported. They are implemented using the String.Compare() method.
• Fixed a problem with local variables declared on the start line from FOR .. NEXT statements
• Added first version of the documentation in CHM & PDF format
• Added several properties to the Visual Studio Project properties dialog to allow setting the new compiler options
• Fixed a problem in the Targets files used by MsBuild because some standard macros such as $(TargetPath) were not working properly
• XIDE 0.1.7 is included. This version of XIDE is completely compiled with XSharp !
• The name of some of the MsBuild support files have changed. This may lead to problems loading a VS project if you have used the VS support from the previous build. If that is the case then please edit the xsproj file inside Visual Studio and replace all references of "XSharpProject" with "XSharp" . Then safe the xsproj file and try to reload the project again.
• The WHILE.. ENDDO (a DO WHILE without the leading DO) is now recognized properly

New Examples Forum

Details

Created: 28 January 2016

Upon request from one of our Fox Subscribers we have started a new Examples Forum today.

The purpose of this forum is to demonstrate examples of code, usually using new language features.

We have posted 3 examples to start with, showing the syntax for Anonymous methods, LINQ and how to create a Generic Class

Alpha build 0.1.6 is now available for FOX subscribers

Details

Created: 18 January 2016

We are proud that we can announce a new Alpha build of X# which has been uploaded to the download area for our Fox subscribers.

This new build (0.1.6) is the first build that comes with a Setup and it also includes the first version of our Visual Studio integration.

This Visual Studio integration is still work in progress. Source code Edit/Compile/Debug is supported, but Intellisense (apart from keyword highlighting), Form Editor, XAML editor and other subsystems are not supported yet.

There are quite some changes in the compiler too. For example the "az" and "vo2" compiler options from Vulcan.NET are now supported as well.

Chris has been able to almost completely recompile XIDE with this new XSharp build. Only some small portions that depend on DBF support are not working yet.

This new XIDE 0.1.6 is available for download from the subscriber area as well!