XSharp
The XSharp compiler is a compiler intended to support multiple dialects in the xBase programming language family. The project is intended as an opensource community effort, but is at the moment still partly closed source.
Because the XSharp compiler is based upon the Roslyn compiler for C#, new language constructs are available in all supported dialects.
History
In 2015 the majority of the developers of the Vulcan.NET team started the XSharp compiler development due to conflicts with their previous employer GrafXSoft about future developments. As a proof of concept and viability the Vulcan IDE was recompiled and rebuild in XSharp into XIDE.
On juli 3rd 2017 the first general release (version 1.0.1, Anjou) was published.
Supported dialects
At the moment the following dialects are supported:
- XSharp Core language. This language lacks a native dialect runtime, which means that there are no USUAL, ARRAY and other xBase familiar datatypes.
- Vulcan.NET. At the moment the XSharp compiler compiles the code but depends upon the Vulcan.NET runtime. A rewrite of the Vulcan.NET runtime by the XSharp team is under construction.
- Visual Objects (VO)
- Harbour
In the future, the team intends to also support the following dialects:
- FoxPro
- xBase++
Technology
The XSharp compiler is based upon the Roslyn compiler and can make full use of the available .NET framework classes.
It integrates with all known editions of Visual Studio 2017 and 2015.