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Product Release: Wednesday, February 1, 2017

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

Section titled “gmBasic: Upgrade Engine”

gmBasic is a powerful code processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM systems as .NET (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it is more robust and flexible and it produces cleaner, more correct results. This distribution, Version 30.43, includes several enhancements:

  • Improves the general ability to produce build-complete .NET code from very large, very complex VB6 systems (most recently including enhancements needed to upgrade a Comprehensive Accounting System of 38 inter-related VBPs re ferencing 1,149 unique files containing over 1.8M unique LOC).
  • Improves ByRef to ByVal optimization rules
  • Improves precision of division involving fixed-point quantities.
  • Improves handling of international Character sets in source code and upgrade configuration files
  • Improves handling With blocksusing instance of a user-defined type (C#)
  • Improves handling of IsNull/Null operations with default properties
  • Improves handling of power-of-ten numeric constants to use the ‘E’ notation (e.g., 1.0E3)
  • Improves handling of optional parameters that use private symbols as default values by using overloading

gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment

Section titled “gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment”

Powered by gmBasic, gmStudio is a development environment for creating high-performance, custom VB6/ASP/COM to .NET upgrade solutions. We are always adding functionality to gmStudio and also making it easier to use. This distribution includes several enhancements:

  • Adds a FileName attribute in the ScriptRule commands
  • Adds support for copying selected text to the clipboard from the Side-by-Side code review form
  • Adds support for authoring ’%’ character from Search Reporting template (useful for generating refactoring commands from search results)
  • Improves copying task list data using CTRL-C (names) and Shift-CTRL-C (details)
  • Adds option to add a User Command Script to each task when adding tasks to a gmStudio project file
  • Improves Search Reporting options: unique, template, detail, none
  • Improves ProgID Report by removing deprecated CLSID field
  • Corrects issue with FileExists test when file path is null
  • Corrects issue with starting application with the /folder command line switch

Sample Upgrade Rules

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Rules”

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample upgrade rules that can be used to add custom features to your upgrade solution. These XML documents and gmSL scripts are distributed as source that you may modify to fit your unique requirements. The latest distribution of sample rules files includes several improvements:

  • Standardizes sample COM replacement rulesso that the internal library id is same as default COM library id. This simplifies activating COM replacement rules files in your upgrade solution
  • Simplifies MigrationSupport namespace conventions to streamline the supporting code if needed
  • Updates standard script templates by moving configuration folder specifications to top of script
  • Updates comments in sample standard script templates standard script templates file

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Section titled “Sample Upgrade Solutions”

Great Migrations publishes a number of sample VB6/ASP upgrade solutions to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. The samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements and conventions