Many people have contacted us and asked when the next public beta of X# will be available.

I am happy to announce that this beta will be available by the end of this week.

Compared to the version that we released last February many things have changed. For example:

To make the language more VO/Vulcan compatible:

  • The compiler recognizes the complete VO syntax, so also Codeblocks, Field statements, Workarea alias etc.
  • The compiler can consume the USUAL type, ARRAY, DATE etc from a Vulcan runtime assembly (in what we call Bring Your Own Runtime mode)
  • We have added support for "Clipper Calling Convention"
  • The compiler can produce late bound code (methods and properties can be called on variables of type USUAL and OBJECT)
  • We have implemented most of the /VO compatibilty compiler options that Vulcan has
  • We have added support for String2Psz() and Cast2Psz() and some other intrinsic functions such as SLen(), AltD(), PCOUNT() and _GETMPARAM()
  • We have added several preprocessor macros, such __ENTITY__, __DIALECT__, __VERSION__ etc
  • We have added support for the &() macro operator
  • We have added support for BEGIN SEQUENCE .. END
  • We have added a new /vo15 compiler option. With this option you can disable the (VO and Vulcan) behavior that declarations without type will automatically become 'AS USUAL'
  • All the code compiled by the X# compiler in the Vulcan Dialect will be recognized as "true Vulcan code" by the Vulcan compiler, so you can mix the two if you want or have to.

New features (also in the Core dialect)

  • Support for the DYNAMIC type
  • Support for BEGIN USING .. END USING (similar to the using statement in C#)
  • Support for "interpolated strings"
  • Support for Lambda expressions with multiple expressions or even statements and statement lists
  • a new syntax for 'complex events'
  • Support for the NameOf() intrinsic function
  • Support for BEGIN FIXED .. END FIXED (similar to the fixed statement in C#)

Also many changes were made in the Visual Studio integration such as:

  • Support for the Windows Forms Editor (including separate .designer.prg)
  • Support for the WPF Editor
  • Several project and item templates have been added
  • Support for the Native Resource Compiler
  • Better support for Side by Side installation with Vulcan.NET

Please stay tuned. More news will follow by the end of this week.

 

We are pleased to announce that we have released XSharp Beta 6 to our subscribers today.
This build contains many improvements in the VO/Vulcan compatibility area. A selection from these changes:

  • Added support for compile time codeblocks
  • Added support for all kinds of Aliased Expressions (useful with RDD based data access)
  • Added support for VO Compatible string comparisons
  • Indexed properties can now be used by name (String:Chars for example)
  • Indexed properties can now be defined with overloads with different parameter types (int and string for example)

VO and Vulcan support is nearing completion!

Some new features in this build

  • Added a new syntax to define EVENTS (with ADD and REMOVE keywords)
  • Completed the support for the .Designer.prg for windows forms inside visual studio
  • X# now properly works side by side with the Vulcan project system inside Visual Studio. We no longer "steal" the language service from Vulcan projects
  • Performance improvements in the source code editor for large files

This new build is available for download for FOX subscribers on the FOX download page on this website.

We are proud to inform you that we have released XSharp Beta 5 today to our FOX subscribers.
It has taken a little longer than expected / hoped, but it is full of new features that make the product very compatible with VO and Vulcan.

Next to the obvious bug fixes there are lots of new features in this build, most of which are for the VO/Vulcan dialect only

It has been a few weeks, so it is time again for a progress report.

Free Software

We have worked on the legal side of distributing free software. In the top menu from this website you can now find an option that describes under which licenses we distribute our software. We have decided to use a couple of different licenses.

  1. A license that describes how you can use the compiled version of X# and which components you can include with your product. This is the XSharp Open Software License Agreement.
  2. A second license, the Apache Open License, that describes what you can do with the source code to our runtime and tools
  3. A third license, The XSharp Compiler Source Code License, that describes what our FOX subscribers can do with the source code for our compiler.

Please look at the separate page on this website for more details.

Github

The XSharp source code is available on Github. Please read this FAQ article on where you can find it and how you can contribute.

We are proud that XSharp Beta 4 is available for download for our FOX subscribers.

On top of the changes that we already listed in a news message last week, we have now also added support for some additional VO and Vulcan compatibility topics:

  • BEGIN SEQUENCE... RECOVER USING ... END
  • BREAK.
  • We have also added support for the /VO10 compiler option (Compatible IIF expressions, where the TRUE and FALSE expressions are of a different type).
  • And finally we restored the behavior that the call to the parent constructor no longer has to be the first line inside a constructor (for VO and Vulcan dialect only). That way you will be able to create Clipper calling convention constructors and set default values for missing parameters before calling the Super constructor. Or call a PreInit() method before the super constructor.

As said: this build is for download for FOX subscribers only.

The next public beta is planned for the second half of June 2016, and should contain the full VO and Vulcan compatibility support as well as some enhancements inside Visual Studio and our first XSharp Runtime.

We would finally like to remind you that the introductionary price for the FOX program ends this month.

Stay tuned for more news!

The conference in Cologne is now more than a week behind us and we have all gone back to the usual work.
In the last week many people, that did not attend the conference, have approached us to hear the details about our future plans.
That is why we have decided to upload PDF versions of Robert's presentations to the website.
Goto the Downloads / General section to find them

We have also picked up the work for the Spring build that contains the full Bring Your Own Runtime support. We have now implemented:

  • Clipper calling convention
  • /vo5 compiler option (to set Clipper calling convention for parameter-less methods)
  • Support for the implicit functions PCOUNT, _GETMPARAM and _GETFPARAM
  • Support for String2Psz() and Cast2Psz()

At the same time we have also added a couple of new features to the language (sorry we could not resist it..)

  • Lambda expressions with multiple expressions
  • Lambda expressions with multiple statements
  • The nameof operator
  • Anonymous classes (useful when doing Linq)
  • Using block now (optionally) contains a variable declaration

And also some changes in our Visual Studio integration

  • Support for designer.prg
  • Fixed some problems with opening the source from the error list
  • Visual Studio was always treating "warnings as errors" regardless of the setting in the project properties. This has been fixed.

Please give us a week or so to wrap this up, create some examples and to release Beta 4 (for FOX subscribers only).

We have just returned from a very succesful conference in Cologne, called XBase.Future.

The conference was very well organized and we would like to thank the organization again for all their work. Maike, Michael, Meinhard and the other team members from Fischer and Consults, you have done a great job!

We can tell you many stories about the conference. But for us the change in atmosphere compared to last years conference was the most important thing. Last year many people were not happy with the lack of progress in Vulcan.NET and were seriously considering alternatives outside of the XBase world for their future development.

Our new XBase language has changed all of this. In the closing session one of the attendees perfectly said: "X# has brought us new hope".

We are proud that we can announce that today, at the first day of the XBase.Future conference, we have also released XSharp Beta 3.

This new Beta is full of new things, both in the compiler as well in the Visual Studio integration.

The new beta will also be included in the conference material for the attendees of the XBase.Future conference.

  1. Countdown and final preparations for the conference
  2. XSharp progress report April 2016
  3. Easter present: XSharp Beta 2 is avaliable for FOX subscribers
  4. XSharp progress report
  5. New support option: XSharp News Server
  6. XSharp Roadmap 2016

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