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.

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.

Supported dialects

At the moment the following dialects are supported:

• XSharp Core language. Which supports all available language features available in the Roslyn compiler for C#, in a xBase like syntax. 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.

In the future, the team intents to also support the following dialects:

• FoxPro
• xBase++
• xHarbour

Technology

The XSharp compiler is based upon the Roslyn compiler and can make fully use of the available .NET framework classes.

External links

• Vulcan.NET Xbase language for Microsoft .NET
• The XSharp Roslyn based multi xBase dialect compiler initiative