Articles

A short message to inform you of things we are working on this moment.

• We are making good progress with the new macro compiler. Most of the features are ready. And performance is very good !
• We have located and fixed almost all of the issues (some of) you have reported with the X# runtime
• We have added support in the compiler for the Xbase++ dialect.
• We have fixed many things in the VS integration. And X# also installs and works with the new Visual Studion 2019 preview
• We have also rearranged the runtime to better support the Xbase++dialect. There is now a separate VO assembly and a XPP assembly. Both share a common RT assembly that contains the common code (such as the USUAL, DATE and FLOAT types)
• We have updated the compiler to the latest version of the Roslyn source code. As a result we have new features (such as the ability to generate reference assemblies ), the new combination of "PRIVATE PROTECTED" which makes a type member only accessible for derived classes in the same assembly and more.
  We have not enabled all the new features of the latest C# versions yet. For some of them we still have to invent a syntax. We are considering to add the IN modifier for parameters in one of the next builds. This will declare a readonly reference parameter. This is especially useful when you have a structure as parameter of a method (like the FLOAT or USUAL structures in the runtime). This should result in somewhat faster execution speed since at runtime not the whole structure has to be passed to a function or method, but only the address of the structure. Once we have added this to the compiler then we will also start to use this in the runtime.
  There are many other new features added to Roslyn. You can look at this page to see the new features in C# in the last versions.
  If you see something that you think is useful for X#, please let us know. And if you have a suggestion for a syntax, that helps too. One other thing we are thinking about is the "is pattern", which combines the "IS" check with the "ASTYPE" operation and creates a variable that has the scope of the IF expression that it is part of :
  
  

  IF oServer IS DbServer oDbServer
     oDbServer:SetOrder(0)
  ENDIF
  oDbServer:GoTop()    /// <- this will generate a compiler error because the scope of oDbServer is the statementblock inside the IF expression

We expect a new FOX release of the product by the end of next week. A public release will follow short before Christmas

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This year we have another special offer on our subscriptions to celebrate Black Friday.

Buy a FOX subscription this week and enter the coupon code "BLACKFRIDAY2018" and you will get a 35% discount on your purchase.

Click here to automatically order with this coupon code

Please note that this discount code can't be combined with other discount codes.

 

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A quick message to inform you of some of the things that are happening in the X# team.

1. We know that many of you (just like us) love footbal (soccer). Wouldn't it be great if you could combine soccer with technology.
   It turns out you can. At the university of Twente a team of you students is working on Robot soccer.
   We like that idea so much that we have signed up as sponsors: https://roboteamtwente.nl/
   
2. We have received a request from the community to start adding support for the XBase++ dialect to the compiler. We have analyzed the language differences, and it seems that there are very few differences. The biggest change is the way that classes are declared. XBase++ follows the "Class(y)" style of class declaration (Anton van Straatens OOP extension to the Clipper language).
   The class declaration syntax for XBase++ is also almost identical as the syntax for (x)Harbour. So we might combine the two.
   At this moment we are working on the XBase++ support in the parser and compiler.
   After that we will add runtime support for the XBase++ dialect.
   This new dialect will most likely not be included in the upcoming releases , but we still would like to inform you.
   Our XBase++ customer wants to run his code in a webservice. So no UI. Most likely we will create some kind of poor man's UI that emulates the CRT windows on the console.
   If you are interested in XBase++ support and would like to contribute on the UI or specific runtime functions (maybe a library like Sql Express or XBase Tools) please contact us.

 

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We have released X# Bandol Beta 7. This build fixes some issues found in Beta 6, adds the Hybrid classes that were also present in Vulcan (thanks Paul Piko) and some functions that we had overlooked in previous betas.

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