TOPIC:

Hi all,
What an incredible amount of work has been done by the development team on X# - well done, and thank you.

I have an application I have been working on since 1987... dBaseIII, through Clipper and then to VO... currently it is in VO2.7b.
I got VO2.8 4 in 2013 but have not been able to get my application properly moved (due entirely to my skill level)
i use bBrowser, FABPaint/Zip/Twain, COMSDK and a couple of other 3rd party tools.
The AEF is about 22MB.

I have been experimenting with the Xporter / XIDE for a few days on and off and would like to keep going until my app is moved, but I would like to check that I am not wasting my time - is it actually possible to go to X# from 2.7b without moving to 2.8 first?

Is there anyone who would like to offer their services commercially to mentor or actually assist with the conversion process?
It might take me more time than I have left on the planet if I continue alone, and cost what is left of my sanity.

Thanks, Jonathan

Hello Jonathan and welcome!

Yes, having the app ported to VO2.8 first would help, but it is definitely possible porting directly from 2.7 as well.

But I wouldn't go into the deep directly, porting the whole large app at once. It's better if you do it step by step, porting small pieces maybe at first, to also get familiar with the new environment and how things work in X# in the process. And first of all make sure to read everything in the topic "Migrating apps from VO to X#" of the X# help file and do go through the samples yourself.

About 3rd party libraries, a bBrowser version for X# should be soon available, Fab libraries should be easy to make them work in X#, but be prepared that you'll need to use alternatives for COMSDK. Please do not hesitate to ask anything about the process or any problems you are facing!

Hi Jonathan,

a 22 MB AEF is not that big.... my largest application is about 21 MB (exe and one library), without counting my framework libraries.
It depends largely on how your code was written, if it is easy to port.
If you have followed the standard with a lot of painted windows, servers and menus, it should be not too hard, but if you have done a lot of Windows API code and extended the base classes, it could be harder.
For what purpose do you have used the COMSDK?
Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,
The COMSDK is mostly for Outlook integration. Sending email: Open a new email, attach a PDF.
Also, I have kept everything more-or-less standard without extending the base classes.
Thanks, Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

the part of Outlook integration has to be rewritten. Fortunately the .NET COM integration is a lot better than the one of VO, so sou will not need any 3rd party library.
For the bBrowser most likely you will have to buy the upgrade to the .NET version. The current Vulcan/.NET version of bBrowser compiles with a few changes also in X# with the X# runtime and runs also well (my Dictionary Editor is fully ported to X# and makes use of bBrowser).
Wolfgang

Hi Jonathan,

jonhn wrote: The COMSDK is mostly for Outlook integration. Sending email: Open a new email, attach a PDF.
Also, I have kept everything more-or-less standard without extending the base classes.

Firstly welcome! Good to see you here.

.NET has a lot of alternatives for Outlook integration etc, so although it will require some work to recode it is probably easier than in VO for that matter.

I don't think you should have too much problems. One thing that you probably will have to consider if not immediately is if you going to stick with VOWindow classes for your UI or move to WinForms/WPF which are part of the .NET assemblies. Business logic should go over relatively easy although you might want to make use of the stricter compile features found in .NET/X#

Enjoy the ride, and feel free to ask questions as you go along!

We've ported some smaller applications and recently I started porting our larger libraries. I made notes which issues we encountered and how we solved it. Previously, 2 trainees from Fabrice did some porting as well and they made some notes too.

I can imagine that others do the same. I wonder if we could somehow merge these kind of notes from multiple "converters" which may help others during conversion.

I give 2 samples of how my notes look like:

Problem
Error XS1073 Unexpected token ''=' (':=' expected)' IC2 lib C:\XporterOutput\IC2 lib\Windows Algemeen LV.prg 973
Solution: Assignments should be := and not = . Surprising VO did not give "Not an assignment. Is this ok?"

Problem
Error RC2135 file not found: c:\Voprgicons\comment IC2 lib C:\XporterOutput\IC2 lib\Icons.COMMENTADD.rc 1

Code: COMMENTADD Icon c:\Voprgicons\comment-add.ico
Cause: the compiler truncates after the hyphen
Solution: Bug in compiler; add quotes around the name

The documentation of the errors is a bit basic and often difficult to connect to errors related to the conversion. It could eventually even be added to the error documentation maybe.

Dick

Hi Jonathan,

there are a few more sources available that may help during the migration (some of them a bit older):
www.riedmann.it/download/MigrationGuide_VO_to_XSharp.pdf
www.riedmann.it/download/wlib2_to_xs.pdf
www.riedmann.it/documents/Differences_VO_XS.pdf
docs.xsharp.it/doku.php?id=quickstart_xsharp_vo
And feel free to ask whenever you need help!
Wolfgang

Another option for application conversion www.ispirer.com/

wriedmann wrote: Hi Jonathan,

there are a few more sources available that may help during the migration (some of them a bit older):
www.riedmann.it/download/MigrationGuide_VO_to_XSharp.pdf
www.riedmann.it/download/wlib2_to_xs.pdf
www.riedmann.it/documents/Differences_VO_XS.pdf
docs.xsharp.it/doku.php?id=quickstart_xsharp_vo
And feel free to ask whenever you need help!
Wolfgang