"Cooper" Beta details

jim -

Cooper is our new Object Pascal for Java compiler that integrates into Visual Studio and will integrate into MonoDevelop, soon. You may have seen the [introduction preview](http://www.remobjects.com/tv/oxygene-03-CooperPreview "Project "Cooper" Preview") from a while back. With the availability of the beta just announced, I added a new [video of the preview](http://www.remobjects.com/tv/oxygene-04-CooperBeta "Project "Cooper" Preview ") in action running in Visual Studio. It provides a short overview of installing Cooper and running it in Visual Studio.

The prerequisites for running Cooper include:

  • Visual Studio or the Visual Studio Shell (you can download it from the Cooper beta page)
  • .NET SDK (comes with Visual Studio)
  • Java SDK / JDK

It will soon be integrated into MonoDevelop. The command-line compiler will run under the Mono Framework, too.

Visual Studio supports code completion with Cooper and the Java Runtime Environment. You can build right from Visual Studio, too, creating a Java jar file. One of the features that isn’t implemented yet is debugging or running the application from Visual Studio. There is a work around though. Set up an external tool pointing to the Java application launcher:

For the command, navigate to Java.exe which is in the bin directory under the JRE. For the arguments use -jar and the macros that point it to the jar file:

-jar $(BinDir)$(TargetName)$(TargetExt)

Then use the Output Window and set the initial directory to the location of the jar file with the $(BinDir) macro.

Also worth noting are the JAVA and DOTNET defines for use with the $IFDEF compiler directives.

More details on Cooper and our efforts on the Java platform will be coming soon. If you are interested in joining the beta, please send an email, or comment below.