David,

Taken from your bottom quote: "...This new Common Language Runtime provides the same features for all projects built using VS7, regardless of language.". Why would there be any doubt about VFP participating in this?

And I don't see that macros expansion should have to go. More logically, in my humble opinion, it would be *added* to the languages where it is not presently available or made available in the CLR for VFP alone.

As for a performance hit, I would guess that MS is counting on the nice fast processors to 'hide' this.

Cheers,

Jim N


>OK folks,
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>Who's got the scoop on "Common Language Runtime", announced as part of the .NET framework? Will we see even a stripped-down version of VFP (perhaps without macro expansion) enabled to compile down to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) that the CLR evidently will further compile on-the-fly?
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>Now that we're getting the IMPLEMENTS keyword for interface implementation, what else stands in the way? Or will VFP be the ONLY language on the planet that does not run on CLR? Anyway, this is really interesting stuff! Who's got a PDC Tech Preview of Studio.NET and can say (non-NDA) if there is perhaps a new compile option? If not, who wants to write it?
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>From today's announcement about Fujitsu's COBOL !!! version for CLR and .NET:
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>As the only COBOL vendor to currently target the new Microsoft environment, Fujitsu Software has a commitment to a vision of seamless interoperability and powerful programming tools. The price of this commitment is the development of an enhanced COBOL compiler with language extensions to support the new platform, a completely new code generator targeting Microsoft's Intermediate Language (IL), and ASP+ support code for COBOL, among other things.
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>...The common language runtime achieves its goals of interoperability, security, and robustness by operating on MSIL instead of native code. This means that compilers that target the environment have to develop new code generators that generate MSIL instead of native code. The common language runtime uses just-in-time (JIT) compilation strategies to ultimately translate code for the platform into fast native code.
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>And from the VBPJ special report at http://www.devx.com/upload/free/features/vbpj/2000/08aug00/ts0008/tsov0008/tsov0008.asp :
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>Common Language Runtime
>Runtime services associated with both Visual Basic and Visual C++ have long differed-providing different capabilities to projects built in different languages. Yet, in VS7, on top of the Web Services technology substrate lies a new set of runtime services shared among all VS7 tools. This new Common Language Runtime provides the same features for all projects built using VS7, regardless of language.
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>Most obviously, the Common Language Runtime provides a consistent interface to base technologies in the lower level—Web Service technologies. Developers using any tool in VS7 can skip through the other layers to use this consistent set of interfaces for increased power. But some less obvious benefits promise more than just a consistent set of interfaces. The Common Language Runtime provides a more robust, secure platform for any app built using any language. Plus, because apps now share interfaces, it's easier to build distributed applications using different development languages and tools under VS7. Not only can projects benefit from more consistent interfaces, but the Common Language Runtime also provides cross-language inheritance and cross-language datatypes.
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