Progress report Nov 23, 2020

It's time for another progress report.

We are working very hard to finish X# build 2.7. Some of the changes that you can expect in this build:

Compiler

• There are some changes to make X# more FoxPro compatible:
  • You can now use parentheses to access array elements (aMyArray(1,2))
  • Support for the TO keyword in the CATCH clause of TRY CATCH (CATCH TO myVar)
  • Support for the ASSERT command and SET ASSERT. An Assert dialog has also been added to the runtime.
  • Support for SET CONSOLE and SET ALTERNATE
  • Assignment expressions with a "=" assignment operator and a macro are now working ( &myVar = 42)
  • The compiler now recognizes the AS <type> OF <classlib> syntax.
  • You can now also use the mdot syntax in declatation statements  (LOCAL m.myVar)
  • And more
• We have made several fixes for issues reported by customers

RDD System

• Exclusive read/write operations are now MUCH faster because we switched to using cached IO.
• Internally the RDD system now directly works with the stream objects. This solves a problem with incorrect index page numbers that were causing index file bloats
• Fixed a problem updating DBFCDX index files for files with a large number of duplicate key values.
• For VFP compatible DBF files that are part of a database container you can now access fields by their short (10 character) field names as well as their longer field names that are read from the database container.
• We have added support for database containers. This includes the various DATABASE related commands such as SET DATABASE TO and OPEN DATABASE as well as the DbGetProp() function. DbSetProp() is not supported yet and will come in the next release.
• The runtime now works with Data Sessions. Each thread gets its own datasession. The DBC files are also opened in a separate data session.
• We have added the structures and functions needed to work with the Advantage Management API.

Runtime

• We have added support for FoxPro compatible arrays
• Many other smaller fixes.

VS Integration

• We have fixed a problem in the Windows Forms editor that prevented it from correctly saving forms with complicated code that was produced by some of the DevExpress controls
• When creating a new VO compatible UI form in the VS IDE you can now clone an existing form.
• Solutions with "flavoured" projects (such as MsTest projects) were not always opened correctly. An exception could occur. This has been fixed. It can still occur that the project appears as 'unloaded' but a right click and reload in the Solution Explorer will fix that.

Of course this is just a selection of the issues found and fixed.

We expect to release this build around Dec 1.