XSharp Bandol Beta 9 "Winter has come"
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- Created: 31 January 2019
 | We are very proud that we can announce that we have just released XSharp Bandol 9 "Winter has come" to our FOX subscribers.
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{rsfiles path="fox/Compiler/XSharpSetup2Beta9Fox.zip"}
X# Summit continued
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- Created: 29 January 2019
The X# Summit in Austin is getting closer and closer. We are preparing everything for a great event.
If you haven't registered yet, now is the time to do so. The special hotel room price will expire on Feb 15, but apart from that we'd like to know a.s.a.p. if you are coming so we can confirm and reserve everything with the hotel and others involved.
The session schedule will become available in a week or two from now.
We hope to meet you in Austin !
Progress report January 2019
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- Created: 26 January 2019
The Christmas build (2.0.0.8) has been received very well, but unfortunately a few small issues in the compiler make this build difficult to use for some of our clients. The good news is that we are getting very positive reports about the level of compatibility of the runtime and the compatibility and speed of the macro compiler.
We will deliver a new version in the coming weeks that fixes the compiler problems and also has some bug fixes to the runtime and VS integration.
The biggest other change in that new build will be the support for dBase style "dynamic" variables, such as PUBLICs and PRIVATEs. We have added this to the language, even though we think that there are better ways to code, but we know that some of our (potential) customers are using it. We have also added support for the PARAMETERS keyword which is an alternative for the declared parameters and works just like the parameters in a clipper calling convention. But the compiler does not create local variables for these parameters but private variables.
Differences between VO and Vulcan dialect
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- Created: 09 January 2019
We sometimes get a question about the differences between the VO and Vulcan dialect.
In the table below we have tried to list these differences
| Description | VO | Vulcan |
| Keyword abbreviations | Supported for all 'old' keywords for 4 letters or more. See table on https://www.xsharp.info/help/x-keywords.html. All the keywords in the VO column may be abbreviated. | Only supported for PROCEDURE (PROC) FUNCTION (FUNC) LONGINT (LONG) SHORTINT (SHORT) |
| String literals | String literals can be defined with single quotes and double quotes: "This is a string" 'This is a string with an embedded double quote "' | String literals can only be defined with double quotes |
| Char literals | Must use single quotes prefixed with 'c', e.g. c'A' | Single quotes, the 'c' prefix is optional, e.g. 'A' and also c'A' |
| PSZ indexer | PSZ indexing is 1 based | PSZ indexing is 0 based (this is actually a bug in Vulcan that we are emulating) |
| MemVars (PUBLIC, PRIVATE) | Yes (in a future release) | No |
| Single line comments | Uses both // and && | Only // is supported. && is a synonym for .AND. |
| Compiler macros | defines __DIALECT_VO__ and __VO__ | defines __DIALECT_VULCAN__ and __VULCAN__ |
Something else that needs to be mentioned: if you switch from the Vulcan runtime to the X# runtime, please remember to remove the #include statements for the Vulcan header files, such as VOWIn32ApiLibrary.vh)
The values in these header files are now stored as defines (constants) in the VO SDK assemblies, such as VOWin32APILibrary.dll and also in the runtime assemblies (for values from VOSystemLibrary.vh).
Removing the header files will most likely improve the compilation speed.
X# Summit, Austin, March 21-22 2019
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- Created: 04 January 2019
The registration for the X# Summit is now open. Click here for more information.
XSharp Bandol Beta 8 Public
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- Created: 24 December 2018
The public beta 8 of X# Bandol is now also available for download.
X# Summit in the US - March 2019
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- Created: 22 December 2018
A few months ago we posted a message on our forums under the title "The X# devteam wants to meet you". The reponse to that has been very positive, so we have decided to organize the event. With the help of Greg Garza and his colleagues at QLAdmin Solutions we have booked a location and we are now finalizing the plans.
We have decided to name this the "X# Summit".
It will be held in Austin (Texas) and will be on Thursday March 21 and Friday March 22 2019 . Please block those dates in your calendar if you want to attend.We will post more information later this week with details about the schedule, how you can register, what the costs will be, how you can reserve a room at the hotel for a special price that we arranged etc.
We will present the current state of the X# development and show how to migrate your apps from VO to .Net. We will also have time to explain some of the internals of the X# compiler and runtime and how you can use the new features in the product (generics, lambda expression, linq, scripting, multi threading etc) in your apps. We will also show you the support that we have for other dialects (such as XBase++ and Harbour).
Of course there will also be plenty of time for questions and answers and to socialize with other XBase developers, exchange ideas and maybe make plans to work together.
We intend to be there with 2 people from the development team, but we are also looking for other speakers. If you are interested then you can fill a complete time slot, but it would also be great if you want to share a success story of a project that you did. Our idea is to have one time slot where people can show their applications ("Application Show"). We have done this on other events in the past and this was always very inspiring.
We did want to share this with you so you can discuss a possible trip to Austin with your family during the Christmas holidays. So why don't you come and bring your partner for a nice (romantic?) weekend after the conference.
Once again, on behalf of the entire X# development team a very happy Chrismas for you and your loved ones.
XSharp Bandol Beta 8 "The Christmas Edition"
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- Created: 20 December 2018
 | We are very proud that we can announce that we have just released XSharp Bandol 8 "The Christmas Edition" to our FOX subscribers. This new version has many new features. To name a few:
The development team wishes you all a very happy Christmas.
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{rsfiles path="fox/Compiler/XSharpSetup2Beta8Fox.zip"}
December update
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- Created: 07 December 2018
A short message to inform you of things we are working on this moment.
- We are making good progress with the new macro compiler. Most of the features are ready. And performance is very good !
- We have located and fixed almost all of the issues (some of) you have reported with the X# runtime
- We have added support in the compiler for the Xbase++ dialect.
- We have fixed many things in the VS integration. And X# also installs and works with the new Visual Studion 2019 preview
- We have also rearranged the runtime to better support the Xbase++dialect. There is now a separate VO assembly and a XPP assembly. Both share a common RT assembly that contains the common code (such as the USUAL, DATE and FLOAT types)
- We have updated the compiler to the latest version of the Roslyn source code. As a result we have new features (such as the ability to generate reference assemblies ), the new combination of "PRIVATE PROTECTED" which makes a type member only accessible for derived classes in the same assembly and more.
We have not enabled all the new features of the latest C# versions yet. For some of them we still have to invent a syntax. We are considering to add the IN modifier for parameters in one of the next builds. This will declare a readonly reference parameter. This is especially useful when you have a structure as parameter of a method (like the FLOAT or USUAL structures in the runtime). This should result in somewhat faster execution speed since at runtime not the whole structure has to be passed to a function or method, but only the address of the structure. Once we have added this to the compiler then we will also start to use this in the runtime.
There are many other new features added to Roslyn. You can look at this page to see the new features in C# in the last versions.
If you see something that you think is useful for X#, please let us know. And if you have a suggestion for a syntax, that helps too. One other thing we are thinking about is the "is pattern", which combines the "IS" check with the "ASTYPE" operation and creates a variable that has the scope of the IF expression that it is part of :
IF oServer IS DbServer oDbServer
oDbServer:SetOrder(0)
ENDIF
oDbServer:GoTop() /// <- this will generate a compiler error because the scope of oDbServer is the statementblock inside the IF expression
We expect a new FOX release of the product by the end of next week. A public release will follow short before Christmas