Articles

Next Public Beta

: 19 September 2016

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.

XSharp Beta 6

: 15 August 2016

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

Progress report May 2016

: 29 May 2016

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.

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.
A second license, the Apache Open License, that describes what you can do with the source code to our runtime and tools
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.

XSharp Beta 4

: 08 May 2016

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!