Migrating Visual Basic Applications?

goose69 asks: "I was looking at the various options available to migrate Visual Basic applications on to GNU/Linux , as usual the choices were many from Free Solutions like wxWindows, Gambas, vb2py, to proprietary ones like Phoenix, and so on. Unfortunately, Mono was too much with its multiple licenses. I want to know if anyone out there has done a successful migrations from Visual Basic on Windows to any application framework on GNU/Linux."

Re:Problem with the licencing?????

[atomic-penguin]

Also note that mono is meant for Visual Fred [catb.org] not Visual Basic.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know if anyone out there has done a successful migrations from Visual Basic on Windows to any application framework on GNU/Linux."

It's VBScript, rather than VB, but FogBugz [joelonsoftware.com] has been automatically translated from ASP/VBScript to PHP. IIRC, some of the trickier problems were resolved through a hack that relies on Hungarian notation.

ASP Clone

[Tablizer]

Are you talking about VB 6.0? VBA? VBScript? VB.NET?

If VB-script (ASP), then Sun Microsystems has an ASP clone that used to be under ChilliSoft IIRC. It uses Java bytecode I beleive.

Re:You may not like it, but....

[lordDallan]

The about to be released version [realsoftware.com] of RealBasic does allow the IDE to run on Linux and is written in RealBasic.

This implies that its Linux support will be more robust than the current version's.

Also, if you have a VB 6 license, you can get a free RealBasic Standard for Windows license [realsoftware.com] through April 15th.

One thing to look out for if your writing a RealBasic application for Linux is DB support. There are many database plugins for RB but I've had issues getting some of them to work properly on Linux (though it's been awhile since I've tried so things may have improved).

Anyway, if you're a licensed VB6 user, you probably have a Windows machine, so why not get the free RB license and give it a whirl. It is a "better basic" than VB6, mostly because it's a real OOP environment and is actively being worked on by a company that lives or dies on it being a good product.

HTH

Re:You may not like it, but....

[ikilledmidnight]

the linux version of the IDE isn't out yet and is going to premier with the new version of realbasic (RealBasic 2005) realbasic has been able to conpile for linux from about version 3/4. some screenshots from Realbasic 2005: IDE [realsoftware.com], IDE 2 [realsoftware.com], compiled app [realsoftware.com]

Re:What about extension modules?

[ikilledmidnight]

you have to write them in C/C++ theres a realbasic plug in sdk avaliable to download here [realsoftware.com]

theres a dated plug in writing example here [mactech.com] which'll give you a rough idea of how it all works, RB plug-ins are only platform specific if you use platform specific code, if you use active x for example, it becomes a windows specific plug-in.

Re:Java

[cybergrue]

Eclipse has the "Visual Editor" plugin too create GUI's. Its now part of the standard plugins, so you can download and install it from inside Eclipse using the add/update software menuitem in the help menu. The VE does takes a while to learn, and still needs a bit of polishing, but its definately useable. I just completed a small project for school using it, and after I learned how to use it, it was the easiest Java GUI that I had ever put together.