Articles

A short progress report about some of the things we have been working on.

We have made some changes to the compiler:

• We have added support for the FoxPro binary type (0h1234abcd). This is compiled into an array of bytes in the Core dialect and an instance of the new Binary type in the other dialects. Of course we have also added this new Binary type to the runtime and to the support code for the USUAL type.
• We have added support for CATCH filters (CATCH <identifier> AS <type> WHEN <someexpression>)
• We have added support for pattern matching in SWITCH statements (CASE <identifier> AS <Type>) and we have also added the support for filters to SWITCH statements (WHEN <expression>).
• As you can see both of the previous extensions use the new WHEN keyword. This keyword is positional and can still be used as variable name or function/method name on other positions in your code.
• Currency literals ($12.34) are now stored as Currency values and no longer as System.Double values.
• We have fixed several reported errors.

We have also made some changes to the runtime:

• We have added a new Binary type (see compiler changes)
• We have fixed several reported issues
• We have added settings for SET SAFETY and SET COMPATIBLE to the runtime
• We have fixed several issues in the RDD system, such as setting the EOF and BOF flags with Advantage tables that are the child in a relation and also the calculation of VFP index key values for fields of type "Integer".

VS Integration:

• We have fixed several small issues in the intellisense parser, such as a problem with default expressions and the AS/IS modifiers that were not properly shown in QuickInfo tips.
• We have fixed some problems when retrieving XML comments from external XML files
• The layout of the QuickInfo tips has been improved
• We have fixed a problem with type lookup for the Windows Forms Editor where types with the same name existed in more than one external assembly (within different namespaces).
• We have fixed a few problems in the code generation for the VO compatible editors
• We are preparing the VS project system for .Net Core, .Net 5  and for the support for Nuget package references with the <PackageReference> syntax in your XSPROJ files, so you will no longer need packages.config and you will no longer have copies of the files from the nuget packages in your solution folders.

We are preparing a new build (2.6) internally. Because of some changes to external prototypes of methods we will increase the Assembly version, which means that you will most likely also need new versions of 3rd party products such as bBrowser, ReportPro and Xs2Ado with this new version.

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Unfortunately we have had to take the decision to cancel our X# summit in Memmingen.
The international health situation has not improved enough and we think that it is not responsible to organize an event under the current conditions.
We will replace the event with a series of online events (most likely 4 afternoons with 2 sessions on each afternoon).
More information about that will follow on this website.

Registered attendees have received an email and will receive a credit invoice for their reservation for the event.

Stay tuned !

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On Thursday August 13 at 16:00 CEST. we'll have an online demo about X# and future .Net versions (.Net Core and .Net 5)
In this session we'll demonstrate:

• How does X# compile and run against the various versions of the .Net Framework at this moment?
  We'll look at both VS and XIDE.
• What will change for .Net Core and .Net 5?
• The build system for X# for .Net Core and .Net 5
• We'll demo how to create an X# .Net 5 /.Net core app in how to deploy it with its own copy of the runtime and as a single exe.
• Hopefully we'll also be able to demo an early version of the VS integration for .Net Core and .Net 5 (not sure yet, fingers crossed )
• What code changes are needed to compile for future .Net versions?

The idea of this session is not only to show that it works, but also to explain a bit about the background about building for various .Net versions.

The recording of this session can be found in our Youtube Channel: XSharp Academy

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We have just released the public installer for XSharp Cahors  2.5b
The complete readme with the description of the changes can be found here.
This is the same build as the subscribers build, with the exception that subscribers get a slightly faster compiler, a .Net core version of the compiler  and debug versions of the runtime assemblies to aid in tracking errors (not that we have any <g>).

You can download the installer from here (you have to login first):

{rsfiles path="installers/XSharpSetup25bPublic.zip"}

This will be the last public installer that targets Visual Studio 2015.

The next build of X# (2.6 ?) will only work with Visual Studio 2017 and later.

 

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