Boo: a First Class Language in Visual Studio

Posted by James Vastbinder on Jun 05, 2008 11:31 AM

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Late last month, Jeffery Olson announced BooLangStudio on the Boo Language Users mailing list.  Olson’s effort now makes it possible to write Boo code in Visual Studio 2008 and take advantage of Visual Studio IDE features. 

The first release of the Visual Studio plugin is primarily a proof of concept and Olson warns developers:

Check it out at: http://www.codeplex.com/BooLangStudio
Please note that it is VERY rough around the edges currently. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK is a dependency, also.  And lots of other stuff that I didn't mention.

The current release is version 0.1.2 and development on version 0.2 is actively progressing and is intended to feature:

• Syntax Highlighting
• Simple Intellisense
• An Installer

Around the same time, Cedric Vivier announced the latest release of Boo, 0.8.2 with the following enhancements from the Boo web site:

• (almost) complete nullable type support
• shorthand for nullable types and enumerables
• improved booish behavior with nicer colors
• 'else' block for 'for' and 'while loops
• fixes and improvement related to generic methods

InfoQ has covered Boo in the past providing a primer on the language and highlighted as an ideal host language for creating Domain Specific Languages.

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   Boo Also Runs on Mono

   Jun 5, 2008 11:48 AM by James Vastbinder

   I should have included this in the news post...

   Reply

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   I'm not the only contributor

   Jun 5, 2008 12:27 PM by Jeffery Olson

   Thank you very much for highlighting the project. It should be noted, though, that I'm not at all the sole contributor to this project. James Gregory is doing a great job of working towards a working intellisense implementation. Torkel Ödegaard has pitched in some great bug fixes. Justin Chase and Chris Bilson are working independently towards a working, proper installer for the project.
   
   
   
   I want to point out that the "critical path" for BooLangStudio is implemented, that is: You can open SharpDevelop .booproj projects or create new ones, you can edit non-trivial code and have it be compiled within the IDE (including macros and all of that, provided you satisfy dependencies as needed). Syntax-highlighting is in place, but it could quite fairly be described as "incomplete". This is being worked on.
   
   
   
   Basically everything else is missing, to include: intellisense, debugging support (breakpoints), and all the other stuff you're used to being pampered with when dev'ing on managed code in VS2008.

   Reply

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   i love boo

   Jun 5, 2008 7:57 PM by kknd one

   thank you guys working on it!

   Reply

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   Re: i love boo

   Jun 5, 2008 10:24 PM by Kevin Chu

   I love boo too.
   I wish this IDE too long. Before, I writed boo in SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop.

   Reply

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   What's the big buzz?

   Jun 10, 2008 2:21 PM by Vladimir Sanchez

   Who needs another language? Anyone heard about Python?
   
   
   
   Boo seems like Python wannabe. Do I care whether it compiles?? I apologize for the sarcarsm but in all honesty, the value proposition is more important than its features.
   
   
   
   Good Luck with it! =D
   

   Reply

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