Hot on the heals of the brand new first release of RemObjects C# last month, we have just shipped the new 7.1 update to both RemObjects C# and our Oxygene language.

Despite the very short timeframe, 7.1 deserves the increased version moniker, as it includes — next to a huge amount of fixes, tweaks and improvements — several major new features that we’re very excited about.

Generics for Cocoa

You’ve asked and we listened, so version 7.1 brings full support for generic types to the Cocoa platform — for both Mac and iOS.

While 7.0 already allowed generics to be used on mapped types and provided generic variations of NSDictionary and NSArray, the new version now extends this to support generics on all types – including custom types derived from standard Cocoa classes such as NSObject or more concrete types. The sky is the limit.

Of course this feature is available in both the RemObjects C# and Oxygene languages, and I think this is yet another big step towards language parity between the platforms.

Colon operator, meet C#.

We just could not live without it ourselves, so we went ahead and implemented support for the ?. operator that’s rumored to be officially coming in C# 6.0 to our RemObjects C# dialect, ahead of time. The ?. is, essentially, what the colon (:) operator has been in Oxygene for ages: a way to safely call members of objects, whether the reference is null or not.

So you can now, for example, write if (myArray?.count > 0) and not care if myArray is null or not.

As in Oxygene, the ?. operator will convert the result into a nullable type, and RemObjects C# benefits from the full nullable arithmetic and ternary boolean logic as Oxygene when working with these types.

This means that if you mix nullable types in more complex expressions, the entire expression will become nullable. For example, myArray.count *5 could be null, 0, 5 or 10, depending on whether myArray is null.

We find that the ?. operator (and Oxygene’s colon one) comes in especially handy on the Cocoa platform, where calling members on null objects is second nature for developers coming from Objective-C. I’ve been porting a huge chunk of code from Objective-C to C# these past few weeks, and it’s been a lifesaver.

iOS 7.1 Support in the Box

Timing was not on our side when Apple shipped iOS 7.1 shortly after we shipped Elements 7 last month, and so manual import of the iOS 7.1 SDK was needed for anyone wanting to use RemObjects C# or Oxygene with the new SDK and the new Xcode 5.1. This new update — fittingly enough, given the version number — now includes support for iOS 7.1 in the box to make this easier. And we’re working on infrastructure to make these overlap periods less painful going forward, in time for iOS 8 and the next OS X release.

And there’s more

Further language and compiler enhancements include:

• We’ve introduced a new [Category] aspect to make it easier to implement extension classes (i.e. “categories”, in Cocoa parlance) in RemObjects C# without the need for a special syntax (Oxygene, of course, has dedicated extension class syntax for this, but it can also use the new aspect).
• We’ve extended Cross-Platform Compatibility Mode so that it now ignores the difference in case for the first letter of class called members, and ignores the case of namespaces in cross-platform code. This makes it a lot easier to deal with shared code on .NET (which prefers PascalCase) and Java or Cocoa (which prefer camelCase, and require lowercase namespaces).
• We’ve added additional Fix-Its and Auto-Fixes.
• We’ve added support for methods on records/structs on the Cocoa and Java platforms — yet another checkmark against language compatibility across all three targets, as .NET has had this feature from day one.
• We’ve created new templates and added support for the ASP.NET Razor view engine.

Finally, for everyone downloading Oxygene or RemObjects C# fresh, we have also converted the “with Visual Studio” installers from .ISO files to embedded .exe installers to make them even easier to use.

What are you waiting for?

The new release is available now, and as always it is a free update for everyone with an active subscription. You can find it for download either in your Licensed Downloads area, as well as on the public Trials page. It (optionally) includes the Visual Studio 2013 IDE.

If your Oxygene subscription has lapsed, there has never been better time to renew than now to get both the new release, and everything we have planned for the the rest of the year (and beyond). Such as coughFirecough. As always, you can renew your Oxygene license for a mere $499 per user. And we also have a special “up-renewal” that lets you renew Oxygene and add RemObjects C#, for only $699.

If your RemObjects C# subscription has lapsed, then, well, you’re a time traveller, and regular rules do not apply to you ;).

Prism

Also, for the very last time a reminder that if you are a Prism user, abandoned by Embarcadero, chances are you might be entitled to extended Oxygene for .NET releases from us, and/or qualify for special renewal or cross-grade pricing for both Oxygene and/or RemObjects C#. Check our Prism FAQ for details, or contact us if you have questions.

7.1

I’m very excited about this release. In many ways, it is what the 7.0 release we shipped in March should have been like. It received a ton of attention, testing and bug-fixing internally, and it’s probably the most solid release we ever shipped (only to be topped by what we have coming for May ;)..

I hope you enjoy it, too. Let me know what you think!

Yours,
marc hoffman
Chief Architect