The files from the presentations at our Summit in Potsdam are now available for download:
https://www.xsharp.eu/itm-downloads?folder=general%252FPotsdam2026
Please note that these are only available for attendees. And some of the examples require XSharp 3!
A summary of the roadmap that was presented during the closing session
- A release version of X# 3 is expected in April 2026. This supports:
- VS 2026 support
- .Net 8,9,10 support, but also still .Net Framework
- VS /Ms build project files are so-called "SDK" style projects
- The compiler is based on the C# 13 compiler
- Several new language features, such as File-wide namespaces, Global Usings, FileScoped classes, Record classes, Record structures and more
- Free/Public versions:
- The "VO/Vulcan" version of X# 3 will be for paying (FOX) subscribers only
- A public version for FoxPro/XBase++/Harbour will be available for free for all registered users
- The rationale behind this is that the VO/Vulcan version is feature complete. The others are still "work in progress"
- Later X# Runtime updates will be shipped as NuGet packages (both from this website and from nuget.org) as well as DLL downloads
- After X# 3 our plans are:
- Keep up to date with .Net and Visual Studio
- Add language support through the Language Server Protocol (LSP) for other IDEs such as VS Code, Rider and many others. In time, we will also switch to LSP for Visual Studio as well.
- Add missing Features for other dialects, in particular Visual FoxPro. We may implement some of these for the time being as "Bring Your Own FoxPro Runtime"
- A built-in report designer and runtime to replace both ReportPro and FoxPro reports.
- Improvements to the AnyCpu/Unicode class libraries for the VO SDK
- The SQL RDD
- Of course, we are open for your suggestions. Please let us know what you find important.
Although I did not plan to move to X# 3 I see some potential interesting addition in the above text. But I gladly leave it to users more eager to go to .Net Core to check out of the 3rd party tools work before even consider to go to X#3. If I ever do, it's good to see that we can bypass NuGet. Although the current X# 2.x installation program works very well.
As usual, I keep asking for missing VS editor functionality (compared to VO and also to VS as available for C#): especially not having to every time manually align loops like IF..ELSE..ENDIF, auto completion option of variables which were just added, like in VO and adding CodeLens. I know you have written that CodeLens is time consuming to implement, but in the unlikely event that Microsoft actually improves VS somewhere (so it is easier to implement for you) or a higher number of users finding this important, I want to repeat my request.
For me it would make it sure that I move to X# 3 instead of staying on X# 2.x as this would have considerable impact on my daily work, in positive sense of course.
Dick
You can continue to use X# 3.0 even with the "normal" .NET Framework, no need to go to .NET Core.
Hello Wolfgang,
I understood that from the text. The major reason I would not go to X# 3 is that I first need to see if all the 3rd party tools works as they did. That was a major issue in the begin days of X#.
If you need to develop for Max or Unix or mobile systems and believe MS claims that it is much faster (they always claim that for their new products and they never are faster) and do not mind the learning curve, less 3rd party libraries and the fact that every 2nd has STS (Short term support) of 2 years (and LTS is 3 years) then .Net Core is for you. You will probably argue that you just can continue with the next .Net Core version but again, we're talking Microsoft here and most of their new products lack some feature you may rely on. E.g. VS 2022, which I wouldn't mind to move to, does not support Bitbucket Git and more or less random does not show any WPF Design content in some of my windows which show perfectly well in VS2019. So using the latest MS technology is often a risk and has always major drawbacks.
So, if I understood it correctly, .Net3 is meant mainly to support .Net Core. Very understandable and indeed, it is not that it is useless without wanting .Net Core. But, at very least, I am not in a hurry to install it. And I am probably not the only one.
Dick