News - XSharp

Progress report October 2018

: 05 October 2018

You haven't heard from us in a while, so some of you might be wondering what we are doing.
Well, the answer is that we are working very hard (our wifes say too hard <g>) to finish the X# runtime.
At this moment the status of the runtime is:

97 percent of the functions are implemented, tested and working.
The DBF/DBT RDD is implemented and working
The Advantage RDD is implemented and working (you can use this for DBF/DBT/NTX, DBF/FPT/CDX, ADT/ADM/ADI and the various SQL variants)
The NTX RDD is almost completed
The FPT layer for DBF/FPT/CDX is implemented and working. We have not started with CDX. If you need DBF/FPT/CDX you can use the Advantage RDD in combination with the Advantage local server for now.
The VO SDK is compiling without errors (which means that also all the undocumented VO stuff has been implemented).
And everything is AnyCPU and thread safe. Of course when you use the GUI classes from the VO SDK and/or the SQL Classes then you are limited to x86 because these classes are not designed for AnyCPU.

We have also made some improvements in the Visual Studio support

Opening of very large Solutions now is MUCH faster
We have fixed some issues that were reported

Finally we have made some changes to the compiler that were needed for some special cases related to compiling the VO SDK (this SDK contains some really ugly code...) and we fixed some issues reported by our customers.

We plan to publish our "work in progress" in a new beta for FOX subscribers end of next week, that means if we can succeed to reach our goal:
Our intention for the next beta is that applications that use the standard VO SDK libraries and no 3rd party components should work with minimal changes.
You may have to change the RDD name, but the rest should work.
If you have already changed your code for Vulcan you should be able to swap the Vulcan runtime and Vulcan SDK libraries for our Runtime and SDK libraries, recompile your code and run.

XSharp Bandol Beta 5

: 04 September 2018

We have just replaced both the FOX version and the public version of XSharp Beta 4.
The public version that was released last Sunday had two problems in the compiler that made normal work difficult.
These problems have now been fixed.

FOX subscribers can download the new installer here.
The public version of Beta 5 can be downloaded here.

XSharp Bandol Beta 4

: 26 August 2018

We have just released XSharp Bandol Beta 4.

This new build included fixes to the runtime, Visual Studio integration and a few changes to the compiler.
With this build you should be able to work with the latest version of Visual Studio again.

There is one change in the compiler that qualifies as a breaking change:
When the compiler detects a (static) method and a function with the same name and prototype then the compiler will now choose the function and no longer the method. This is compatible with Visual Objects.
To call the method either prefix the call with SELF: when it is an instance method (which is mandatory in Visual Objects) or prefix the call with the typename (which is not possible in Visual Objects because that language does not have static methods).
We have added a compiler warning for situations where this occurs in your code. See this help page for more information and an example

A public version of this beta will be released later this week.

Progress report

: 19 August 2018

The end of the summer holidays is getting closer, so it is time for a short status update.

The work on the X# runtime is progressing steadily. You can expect a new build with support for the RDD system in a few weeks. Hopefully we will also be able to include the new (faster) macro compiler.

We have also made some small changes to the Visual Studio integration to solve problems introduced in the latest builds of VS 2017. Until we have released the new build we recommend not to update to Visual Studio 15.8.

Next month there is an event from Microsoft called .Net Conf 2018. We have decided to participate in this event, which consists of 3 days online sessions (which are recorded and can also be watched afterwards). There are many interesting sessions about new .Net technologies. I am sure you will find something in the schedule that you like. You will be able to view the sessions from a direct link on our website. More information about this will follow.

To celebrate .Net Conf we also have a special discount on the Friends Of XSharp membership. If you order a copy of FOX between today and September 30th you will get 30% discount if you use the coupon code "NETCONF2018".

XSharp Bandol Beta 3: Summer Holiday version

: 16 July 2018

We have just released XSharp Bandol Beta 3 to our FOX subscribers. This is a special Summer Holiday version to celebrate the summer (at least on our hemisphere) and to celebrate the World Cup victory of one of the devteams' countries.

This build fixes some issues that were found in the runtime and the compiler in Beta 2.

It also fixes some issues in the Visual Studio 2017 integration and has improved keyword case synchronization and indenting support.

The compiler has some changes compared to the previous build but is still of release quality.
The runtime is a beta version and should not be used for production code. It also misses some features that you may need.

XSharp Tools Library

: 15 July 2018

We have listened carefully to discussions on our forums and have decided to open up a new forum and later a new github repository for a XSharp Tools Library.
The idea is that this will be a library with user contributions that they want to share with other users.

At this moment we are considering 4 different libraries

XSharp.Tools.Core
A library with generic functions and classes that have no dependency on xBase types, such as ARRAY or DATE
XSharp.Tools.VO
A library with generic functions and classes that have a dependency on xBase types, such as ARRAY or DATE
XSharp.Tools.Windows.Forms
A library with generic functions and classes that have a dependency on System.Windows.Forms
XSharp.Tools.WPF
A library with generic functions and classes that have a dependency on WPF

Wolfgang Riedman has volunteered to become the moderator of the library and the forum as well. He will also establish the 'rules' for how you can contribute to the library.

It is our aim to include these libraries in the installation with every new build of XSharp. We will also generate documentation for these libraries based on the XML comments in the source.

The development team will take no formal responsibility for the contents of these libraries. Of course some development team members could contribute as an individual.

XSharp Bandol Beta 2

: 29 June 2018

We have just released XSharp Bandol Beta 2 to our FOX subscribers.

A public build will become available later today.

This build fixes some issues that were found in the runtime and the compiler in Beta 1.

It also fixes some issues in the Visual Studio 2017 integration.

Data Driven programming lessons

: 13 June 2018

Johan Nel has written a new article in his series about Data Driven programming that originally was posted on VOPS. We have uploaded this new article as well as the previous 8 articles and the example code to the General \ Lessions section in the Downloads menu entry on this website.

Thanks Johan !

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