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Minor Release: Sunday, 25-October-2015

gmStudio: Upgrade IDE

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade IDE”

gmStudio is a development environment for planning, verifying, and improving custom VB6/ASP/COM upgrade solutions. We are always improving gmStudio to make it easier to use. This distribution includes the following changes:

  • Improves the performance of Model Search
  • Improves the performance of COM Reference Validation when code references unregistered COM type libraries.

Major Release: Wednesday, 21-October-2015

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

Section titled “gmBasic: Upgrade Engine”

gmBasic is a programming language processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM as .NET code (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it produces cleaner, more correct .NET code. This distribution — Version V20.05.b9 of the upgrade engine and metalanguage files — contains several enhancements:

  • Improves support for upgrading VB6 Collection and Scripting.Dictionary to strongly-typed List and Dictionary. Learn more in this Special Migrations article
  • Improves correctness of Lightweight Object-Oriented Coding standard (Subsystem=“loc”) to help getting a code that builds “right out of the box”.
  • Improves OptionalArguments=on feature
  • Improves nested ASP #include file processing

gmStudio: Upgrade IDE

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade IDE”

gmStudio is a development environment for planning, verifying, and improving custom VB6/ASP/COM upgrade solutions. We are always improving gmStudio to make it easier to use. gmStudio now includes these improvements:

  • Improves the User Configuration files context menu behavior
  • Adds Upgrade Source Type to the Project File settings panel
  • Improves the Inline command to allow relative paths to script files
  • Improves script parameter handling to allow case-insensitive parameter replacement
  • Improves listing/grid display options on the Information Panel
  • Adds Edit Task Attributes form and context menu item
  • Adds Script File Comparisons option if you want to use custom file comparison tool for batch comparisons
  • Adds Multi-Line Regex Search option to the search panel
  • Corrects resolution of #include virtual references by Source Structure Report for ASP sites
  • Adds System Model Reports (Symbols, IL Audit, References, and Definitions) as new search sources.
  • Adds _LONGEST_ as a new special-purpose pattern to the Source Search to report Longest Source Line in each source file
  • Adds a powerful Template-based Reporting option to the Search panel
  • Adds Result Rows Limit option to the Search panel
  • Improves containing member reported by the Source Scan Report
  • Improves the Upgrade Wizard by generating a Web Site Script for ASP projects and doing Site-based upgrades and reports
  • Corrects Solution builder for Web Application Projects
  • Improves translation log view so that it can launch editor into included script files based on Fix name attribute
  • Adds Screen Layout Toggle to the Main Form
  • Adds Field Layout Toggle for the information panel grids
  • Corrects literal project check for Trial mode

Runtime Support Library

Section titled “Runtime Support Library”

gmStudio ships with a sample runtime library that can be used to produce code that more correctly reproduces VB6/ASP functionality. The runtime library also includes ADODB emulation classes that simplify upgrading data access logic. Note, gmStudio is highly configurable, so using the runtime library is not a requirement. The Great Migrations Runtime Library now includes the following:

  • Adds OrderedDictionary as well as extension methods for List and Dictionary

Sample Upgrade Rules

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Rules”

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample configuration files that you may use to add custom features, such as custom COM replacement and diagnostic instrumentation, to your upgrade solution. There are over 50 Sample Rules files included with the default installation of gmStudio.

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Solutions”

Great Migrations publishes a number of VB6/ASP upgrade solution samples to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. All of the samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements.

Major Release: Thursday, 30-July-2015

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

Section titled “gmBasic: Upgrade Engine”

gmBasic is a unique computer language processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM as .NET code (C# or VB.NET). We are constantly fine tuning gmBasic so that it produces cleaner, more correct .NET code. This distribution — Version V20.05.b5 of the upgrade engine and metalanguage files — contains several enhancements:

  • Adds the Refactor/Generic command to allow specifying multi-type arguments to be upgraded to a Generic argument
  • Adds the Refactor/Overload command to allow specifying multi-type arguments to be upgraded to function overloads
  • Adds support for authoring extension methods in stub classes generated to satisfy platform dependencies
  • Improves support for upgrading VB6 Collection and Scripting.Dictionary to strongly-typed List and Dictionary. Learn more in this Special Migrations article
  • Improves the “For Each” statement upgrade
  • Improves detecting, authoring and using interface-only classes
  • Improves how optional and named arguments are handled when <Select OptionalArguments=“on” />
  • Improves how Event Handlers and EventArgs classes are implemented
  • Improves the custom CodeStyle feature. Learn more in this CodeStyle article.

gmStudio: Upgrade IDE

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade IDE”

gmStudio is a development environment for creating, verifying, and improving custom VB6/ASP/COM upgrade solutions. We are always improving gmStudio to make it easier to use. gmStudio now includes these improvements:

  • Adds an Upgrade Wizard to help new users setup, run, and request assistance with new upgrade projects
  • Improves the Settings Form for better user experience
  • Improves Reports and On-Screen Lists by using descriptive names rather than cryptic identifiers
  • Improves manual Folder selection dialogues by using the full-featured File/Folder Open dialogue rather than the FolderBrowser
  • Adds support for tabulating UPGRADE_TODO records in the Translation Log Report

Runtime Support Library

Section titled “Runtime Support Library”

gmStudio ships with a sample runtime library that can be used to produce code that more correctly reproduces VB6/ASP functionality. The runtime library also includes ADODB emulation classes that simplify upgrading data access logic. Note, gmStudio is highly configurable, so using the runtime library is not a requirement. The Great Migrations Runtime Library now includes the following:

  • Adds OrderedDictionary<K,T> — a generic collection class that helps emulate order-preserving, indexable VB6 collection while adding the goodness of strongly-typed generics and following .NET conventions.
    This class can also be stubbed by the gmBasic engine. It is used when VB6 Collection and Scripting.Dictionary cannot be upgraded to System.Collection.Generic classes automatically.
  • Standardizes namespaces for enumerations

Sample Upgrade Rules

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Rules”

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample configuration files that you may use to add custom features, such as custom COM replacement and diagnostic instrumentation, to your upgrade solution. There are over 50 files in the Sample Rules set. The Sample Upgrade Rules now include this enhancement:

  • Simplifies translation scripts to take advantage of changes in support for subsystems

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Solutions”

Great Migrations publishes a number of VB6/ASP upgrade solution samples to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. All of the samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements.

Major Release: Wednesday, 13-May-2015

gmBasic: VB6/ASP/COM Upgrade Engine

Section titled “gmBasic: VB6/ASP/COM Upgrade Engine”
  • Upgrades translation engine and default metalanguage files to V20.04.B7
  • Adds <Select UseHexConstants=“on|off”/> to enable better support for unsigned int and hex literals (beta)
  • Adds <Select OverloadArguments=“on|off”/> to preserve optional arguments in C# method declarations and calls (beta)
  • Adds status=“Nullable” on Refactor/Fixtype command to begin supporting nullable types
  • Adds support for up to 512 distinct operations in a single statement
  • Adds support for TimeSpan as an alternative target type for Dates
  • Improves support for reading VB6 designer data saved by Forms Interop Toolkit controls
  • Improves support for ParamArray modifier

gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment”
  • Improves Large System Assessment Capabilities
    Translation without code generation is now allowed on any size system.
    With this change, advanced analytics reports may be produced for any size system.

  • Improves Member type information presented on the Source Scan Report
  • Improves behavior of configuration file comparison on Settings Form.
  • Improves handling of clashes between internal names of VBP files
  • Adds ability to open #include files from Reference List

Sample Runtime Library

Section titled “Sample Runtime Library”
  • Improves ToBool() extension method emulate VB6 more closely

Sample COM Replacement Rules

Section titled “Sample COM Replacement Rules”
  • Improves upgrade for MSCOMCTL (ListView)

Minor Release: Friday, 10-April-2015

gmBasic: VB6/ASP/COM Upgrade Engine

Section titled “gmBasic: VB6/ASP/COM Upgrade Engine”
  • Upgrades translation engine and default metalanguage files to V20.04.B5
  • Improves user-defined control of upgrading Collection and Scripting Dictionary to strongly-typed Generic collections.
  • Improves logic to preserve private/public scope modifiers

gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment”
  • Corrects several issues arising when using the application with no project loaded
  • Corrects issues with setting up first project for web files
  • Improves setting up project-specific metalanguage configuration