The language was one of the first wave of niche languages that supported the Microsoft .NET framework when it was announced four years ago. The new version, Eiffel Envision 2.5, improves compatibility with Visual Studio.NET.
Although Eiffel has supported .NET’s common runtime facility for several years, as a development tool, it lacked full compatibility because it did not provide an easy way to map the way the language tracks developed code in the same way that Visual Studio.NET does. The hurdle was that the Eiffel language predated .NET by two decades.
For instance, Visual Studio’s tracking levels include solutions, which can encompass multiple projects (in any .NET language), projects, and references that list .NET features or code assemblies used in the specific project. But Eiffel goes beyond assemblies by tracking source code files and clusters of source files.
Eiffel Envision 2.5, available now, bridges that gap. It goes beyond Visual Studio’s tracking levels by adding the ability to track source code files and clusters of source files. It also adds the ability for mapping .NET types and methods names to classic Eiffel features and classes, to make it easier to expose legacy applications to .NET environments.
