Alpha build 0.1.5 is now available for FOX subscribers
- Details
- Created: 31 December 2015
We are pleased to announce that Alpha build 0.1.5 has been uploaded to the downloads area on this website.
Most of the issues reported by our FOX subscribers have been fixed in this build.
Some of the changes in this build:
- When an error occurs in the parsing stage, X# no longer enters the following stages of the compiler to prevent crashes. In addition to the errors from the parser also an error 9002 is displayed.
- Parser errors now also include the source file name in the error message and have the same format as other error messages. Please note that we are not finished yet with handling these error messages. There will be improvements in the format of these error messages in the upcoming builds.
- The compiler will display a “feature not available” (8022) error when a program uses one of the Xbase types (ARRAY, DATE, FLOAT, PSZ, SYMBOL, USUAL).
- Fixed an error with VOSTRUCT and UNION types
- Fixed a problem with the exclamation mark (!) NOT operator
Best wishes for 2016
- Details
- Created: 31 December 2015
From the Devteam meeting in Athens we wish all our customers and supporters a very succesfull 2016.
We are looking forward to an exciting year:
- End of January the first public beta of XSharp will be released.
- End of April the official launch of the product will be at the Xbase.Future 2016 conference in Cologne (what used to be the Vulcan.Live conference). Come join us there and see the exciting new features in X#.
The devteam in front of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens
Fabrice Foray
Nikos Kokkalis
Chris Pyrgas
Robert van der Hulst
Alpha build 0.1.4 is now available for FOX subscribers
- Details
- Created: 14 December 2015
We are pleased to announce that Alpha build 0.1.4 has been uploaded to the downloads area on this website.
Most of the issues reported by our FOX subscribers have been fixed in this build.
Some of the changes in this build:
- Several changes to allow calculations with integers and enums
- Several changes to allow VO compatible _OR, _AND, _NOT an _XOR operations
- Fix interface/abstract VO properties
- Insert an implicit “USING System” only if not explicitly declared
- Error 542 turned to warning (members cannot have the same name as their enclosing type)
- Changes in the .XOR. expression definition
- Fix double quote in CHAR_CONST lexer rule
- Allow namespace declaration in class/struct/etc. name (CLASS Foo.Bar)
- Fix access/assign crash where identifier name was a (positional) keyword: ACCESS Value
- Preprocessor keywords were not recognized after spaces, but only at the start of the line. This has been fixed.
X# Progress Report, Dec 4 2015
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- Created: 04 December 2015
In this message I would like to share with you some of the progress that we have made with the X# project, and especially the progress with the new compiler.
We have planned to release the first public version of the compiler in the first quarter of 2016 and we are very much on schedule. In fact I think we are a little ahead of schedule.
Most of the new language features that we have on our list for the X# Core dialect are working, and the code generation has proven to be of excellent quality. Our choice to build the new compiler on top of the Roslyn architecture has proven to be an excellent choice. It has taken some effort, but we are getting there. At this moment almost all “valid code” compiles and runs perfectly. We are now focussing on the level of handling incorrect code and producing meaningfull error messages. We are also focussing on some of the areas where the Xbase language is quite different from the C# and VB languages where the Roslyn architecture was written for.
As proof that the compiler is working we have uploaded a few examples (both source, EXE and PDB) that you can test on your own machine.
Alpha build 0.1.2 is now available for FOX subscribers
- Details
- Created: 30 November 2015
We have just uploaded Alpha build 0.1.2 to this website. It is available for download for FOX subscribers.
A summary of the changes in this build can be found in the Announcements forum on this website
If you are interested to test this build and you have not subscribed to the FOX program yet, then please go ahead and scubscribe today.
FOX program has started. First Alpha of X# ready
- Details
- Created: 25 November 2015
We are pleased to announce that the Friends Of XSharp (FOX) program has started.
You can now register for this program through the Store link on this website.
The introductionary price for the FOX program is EUR 495,- as has been announced before. There is also a discounting system for companies that want to subscribe with multiple users.
The FOX program includes support for the X# language as well as for Visual Objects and Vulcan.NET.
At this moment we offer support through our online forum only. The Internet Newsgroups are being setup, and we will let you know a.s.a.p. when these are available.
For our subscribers we have also uploaded the first Alpha version of the X# compiler.
Runtime Optimizations in X#
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- Created: 18 November 2015
Some of the many items in our TODO list for Vulcan.NET had to do with optimizing the runtime and adding some missing functionality (like passing USUALs by reference to CLIPPER methods) to it. We had already implemented some, like improving performance of the late binding system, but for obvious reasons we were not able to make any further improvements in Vulcan.NET. But now, with the fresh start of XSharp, it is a great opportunity to make things right and fast from the beginning. In this article we will discuss optimizations planned or already implemented on the USUAL, FLOAT and ARRAY data types, more about other types and parts of the runtime will follow in future articles.
The problem with the USUAL type
In Vulcan.NET, the VO-compatible USUAL type is defined as a structure (value type), which makes sense, as it is easier this way to emulate the semantics of the USUAL type, the same way as it behaves in VO. Structures are supposed to be lightweight, compact data types, usually a few bytes long, in order to achieve good performance when copying values from one to another, or passing them as parameters to methods etc. Examples of very common structures used in the system classes are System.Drawing.Point (8 bytes long) and Rectangle (16 bytes long).
The problem with the way the USUAL type is implemented in Vulcan.NET, is that it’s much longer than that. It is easy to check its size, with a simple line of code:
? SizeOf(USUAL)
New language features
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- Created: 11 November 2015
Below is a list of some of the most visible new language features in the Core language of X# , compared to Visual Objects and Vulcan.
As you can see many new keywords were introduced, but these are positional: they will also be recognized as Identifiers on other places, so there is very little chance that you will have to make changes to avoid naming conflicts.
Entities and Statements
Below is a list of the new commands / entities inside X#. There are also some new options for existing commands. A full list of changes will be available later.