SharpDevelop Community

I would love to see the VB6 language added to #Dev. MS will not do it to Visual Studio so the only other place I can think of going would be here. There are some commercial alternatives to VB6 based on BASIC but they are lacking in many, many areas.

Requirements

1. Load VB6 project\group\bas\cls\etc.. files
2. Offer the same compile options as the current VB6 IDE
3.     - Possibly extend these compile options to generate native x86 code
4. Compile to the PCode or "Native" VB6 run-time code
5. Use the great IDE features (refactor, winforms editor, etc...) currently in #Dev
6. Support adding toolbox COM controls
7.  [I assume harder to do, thus low pri] Read existing ADD-INs from VB6 into #Dev

To make this effort easier, I would require (I would assume reengineering the whole VB6 language from scratch is a huge undertaking) that the original VB6 IDE be installed on the machine so that #Dev can leverage all command line utilities it uses for compiling.

What benefit could this bring to #Dev?
If you could do this, (currently any .NET work I do is in VS as I get free copies) you would be doing a HUGE service for the VB6 community. Not only that, if they all had replacement (I still keep a few VB6 projects active) for the IDE that was better then the legacy IDE, they would all migrate over to #Dev. This also would increase the possibility of them using #Dev for other .NET based projects since they have it all in one single IDE. This would increase your user base.

What benefit to VB6 users would this bring?
Well we would all get a maintained feature rich IDE. A single location to work on both VB6 and .NET based projects. And the possibility of having a VB6++ language eventually that added more OOP features and direct memory management to the normal VB6 language while retaining support for VB6- language.

Thanks for the time, I appreciate it!
-Steve De George JR

Note:
You could be adding 10,000 or more users to your user base: http://classicvb.org/petition/

Definitive answer: NO.

Chris 

To elaborate on Chris' rather succinct answer:

VB 6 no longer is actively maintained and supported by MS.

The VB 6 compiler never shipped outside of the IDE. There is no legal way to obtain the bare compiler that I know of.

The infrastructure needed for a VB6 windows forms designer is completely different as it is outside the .net framework in the case of VB 6. And it most definitely does not have any documentation publicly available. 

There is no source code of the compiler available to modify it in the way you suggested. (Compilers are ugly pieces of code in any case, I really don't want to think about what is going on inside VB 6)  The suggested modifications would mean that you are trying to turn an "object inspired" language into an object oriented language, which definitely sounds like a less than simple undertaking that, even if possible, would probably end up as some kind of VB.net with warts on it.

Sorry, but your kind suggestion is not implementable by mere humans. 

OUCH! VB6 add-on would be great.

Here also is a addon to VB 6 that allowed C and ASM to be embedded into it and allow you to create true StdCall Dlls.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/thundervb/   Someone dug DEEP under the hood....

aaaaaahhhhhhh  it would be great...   :)    I have customers that I WONT abandon just because VB6 has been abandoned by MS. What do I tell them? 'Sorry, MS has decided that I have made enough money from you and if you want anything  anymore I need to put in another 10,000 hours and charge you all over again for the SAME software because the NEW computer you bought to replace that older, broken computer wont work'

So what have I learned from this MS-VB6 thing...  One word.  Open Source.  (Ok, I know that was 2 words...  LOL)

BTW...  #Dev is GREAT!!!!   As for me?  I will keep my VB6 and MONO is my new target platform.  

Keep Dev'ing!

Jakebullet (Thats traffic!) 

Hm. VB 6 really, really is dead and gone as far as MS is concerned.

To keep your customers happy, you might look at this msdn page - if you haven't done so already. Somewhere deep down there you'll find a converter that can do most of the migration work for you.

And by the way - mono is an Open Source implementation of the .net platform, so it won't make much difference whether you use that or the MS .net platform. And of course you can target both platforms in #develop :-)
 

The problem with the mentatllity of "just upgarde your vb6 code to .net using a converter" is that the .net platform runs dog slow on a p3 600mhz or 1ghz. I don't know about Mono, but vb6 can run much faster on those machines.

 There obviously is still a place for vb6 in the development world because it hasn't died yet and .net was released about 6 years ago.

Now about the compiler for vb6 this is where my point of requiring the original vb6 be installed so that sharpdev would just shell out to it for compiling. I believe the linker is just MS C++ linker, but i'm unsure about other components of the compiling system.

I do understand that #dev is strictly .net, but does it have to be? :)

I'd like to apply the "killer argument of open source": feel free to implement this feature. We definitely not even entertain the idea.

Chris 

As VB 6 is no longer available and supported and as there is *no* publicly available specification or documentation of the compiler's internal workings, implementing this would be rather hard, not to say impossible. Of course, if there is somebody out there feeling up to that task, I'd be pleasantly surprised if s/he succeeds.

Mono as already mentioned is re-implementation of the .net framework. I doubt that it uses less resources. VB.mono is a re-implementation of VB.net.

Now about the compiler for vb6 this is where my point of requiring the original vb6 be installed so that sharpdev would just shell out to it for compiling. I believe the linker is just MS C++ linker, but i'm unsure about other components of the compiling system.

Hmmm. Now that is somewhat contrary to your statements about the performance requirements for .net:

...is that the .net platform runs dog slow on a p3 600mhz or 1ghz.

In a nutshell - I hope I didn't get you wrong - you want an IDE relying on the (according to your judgement) performance hungry .net platform to run on a slow machine as a replacement for an EOL'ed Microsoft IDE/compiler that was written natively for that older (incindentally also EOL'ed) platform? And another problem - where to legally obtain that compiler?

If you really care about keeping classical VB alive, please consider signing this petition.

Don't get me wrong - in my young days I spent many a happy day toiling away at writing little VB programs to annoy friends. Boy, do I wish those times were still around... Alas, the times, they are a'changing....

Thanks for all the replies.

In reply to your nutshell point :) Not exactly. I was talking about the framework vs vb6 runtime and a p3 600mhz machine, not the developer tools themselves in reply to the "just upgrade your program to vb.net" comment

New nutshell then :-)

You mean something more like a  "cross compiler" thingie. Develop on one machine, deploy on another. That would make more sense, were the VB compiler legally available for free. However, the compiler is no longer available/supported and it never was available without buying the VB 6 IDE.

Writing a new IDE to use an obsoleted and unavailable compiler that once shipped with its own IDE doesn't make much sense in my eyes.