Since early 2013 we have been distributing version 1.50 to selected customers, gathered their feedback and suggestions, and the result here: VB Migration Partner 1.51 is now ready.

 

There are tons of improvements in this new release, but the most important one is surely full-featured C# code generation. While our competitors are compatible with the C# language found in Visual Studio 2008, we decided to focus on C# 2010, which allows us to support modern C# features were not available in earlier language versions, most notably the dynamic type and optional parameters. These two single features, together with the many enhancements that only VB Migration Partner offers, let our users to create the most efficient and readable code a VB6-to-C# converter can possibly generate.

Here is a short and incomplete list of C# features offered by VB Migration Partner (and in many cases only by VB Migration Partner!):

C# specific

  • support for the dynamic type => faster and concise code
  • support for optional parameters => more readable code
  • ByRef parameters rendered using the out keyword if possible => faster code
  • the ability to generate method overloads for ref/out parameters avoids the need for temporary variables in method calls => concise and readable code
  • support for WithEvents variables => less verbose code
  • ability to implement an interface either implicitly or explicitly => compliance with your own programming style
  • transformation of On Error Goto into try-catch blocks (with warnings when the transformation isn't perfectly equivalent) 
  • transformation of On Error Resume Next into lambda expressions => full functional equivalence
  • preserves error codes => no need for manual fixes after migration
  • transformation of And/Or operators into either bit-wise or logical C# operators 
  • transformation of Select blocks into either if or switch blocks => more logical and efficient code 
  • Exit For,Do,While keywords in nested loops => code works as expected
  • expressions and function calls in compiler constants
  • string and math native .NET methods used if possible => compliance with .NET programming style 
VB.NET and C#
  • code generation for VS 2010 and VS 2012
  • support for .NET 3.5 and 4.x
  • improved support for User Control serialization in code-behind sections of forms => faster .NET form loading
  • simplified design-time and runtime support for scaling User Control at different screen resolution and system font sizes => no-brains compliance with .NET coding guidelines
  • positional pragmas: it is now possible to keep all pragma (including method-specific pragmas) in separated text files => less cluttered source files
  • automatici generation of AccessibleName property for .NET or custom controls => .NET apps ready for visually-impaired users
  • support for external source file editors => edit VB6 or .NET code with your favorite tool
  • many bugs fixed (of course!)

Each of these features (and of the many features that I didn't mentioned) would require a separate discussion, and I will surely devote some posts to the most interesting ones. 

For now, you can learn more about C# specific support here.