XSharp

X#, pronounced X sharp and often written XSharp, is an xBase-compatible programming language for the Microsoft .NET platform. X# has been built on top of Roslyn, the open source architecture behind the current Microsoft C# and Visual Basic .NET compilers.

The X# compiler is intended to support multiple dialects in the xBase programming language family. It supports Core, Visual Objects, Vulcan.NET, xBase++, Harbour, Foxpro and more. 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 rebuilt in XSharp into XIDE.

On July 3, 2017, the first general release (version 1.0.1, Anjou) was published. Version 2.5.1.0 was released on July 6, 2020.

The X# development team consists of former members of the Visual Objects and Vulcan.NET development teams.

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. Only the native available datatypes of .NET are available.
• Vulcan.NET: The official runtime of Vulcan.NET can be used or the by XSharp provided alternative runtime.
• Visual Objects (VO)
• xHarbour
• FoxPro/Visual FoxPro

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

• 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 2019, 2017 and 2015.

See also

• Clipper (programming language)
• Harbour (programming language)
• Visual FoxPro

External links

• XSharp Home web site
• XSharp extension for Visual Studio (Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace
• Open Source X Sharp repo source code on GitHub