Hi,

a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at

https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/StartPage.html

Major highlights of this release are

- improvements to the DMD based semantic engine: it has been updated to the frontend version 2.091, and code-completion has improved quite a bit, so much that I would recommend everyone to actually try it (unless you have too little RAM installed to cope with the frontends hunger for memory). Use "Visual D -> Open Language options..." from the menu to enable the "DMD parsing engine" as well as "Colorize identifiers from semantic analysis" on the "Editor" options page.

- the debugger expression evaluation now has support for tuples and simpler display of global variables (it's no longer necessary to specify the fully qualified name)

- updated support for all language options (e.g. -preview), these are also forwarded to the DMD based code analysis

The full version history can be found at

https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/VersionHistory.html

Cheers,
Rainer

On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>
> https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/StartPage.html

[...]

> The full version history can be found at
>
> https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/VersionHistory.html
>
> Cheers,
> Rainer

Great news!

- Bastiaan.

On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>
> [...]

This is awesome! Thank you so much for this. I use Visual D all the time. Keep up the great work :D

On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>
> https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/StartPage.html
>
> Major highlights of this release are
>
> - improvements to the DMD based semantic engine: it has been updated to the frontend version 2.091, and code-completion has improved quite a bit, so much that I would recommend everyone to actually try it (unless you have too little RAM installed to cope with the frontends hunger for memory). Use "Visual D -> Open Language options..." from the menu to enable the "DMD parsing engine" as well as "Colorize identifiers from semantic analysis" on the "Editor" options page.
>
> - the debugger expression evaluation now has support for tuples and simpler display of global variables (it's no longer necessary to specify the fully qualified name)
>
> - updated support for all language options (e.g. -preview), these are also forwarded to the DMD based code analysis
>
> The full version history can be found at
>
> https://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/VersionHistory.html
>
> Cheers,
> Rainer

The DMD Semantic Server seems to hang after 10-15 minutes of operation. Memory usage slowly increases from ~400MB to ~2.9GB, after which it seems to hang. It won't do completion, error checking or semantic highlighting. When I shut Visual Studio down, the semantic server lingers in the background which I have to terminate via Task Manager.

Restarting Visual Studio and terminating the server seems to fix the issue, until it happens again 15 minutes later.

The completion is a tad slow, but it's functional and very accurate, so I'm quite happy with it.

I'm glad to see the progress you've made and I look forward to future updates =)

On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>
> [...]

Nvm it didn't hang. Just took a very long time to complete semantic highlighting.

On 24/03/2020 03:31, Dylan Graham wrote:
> On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>>
>> [...]
> 
> Nvm it didn't hang. Just took a very long time to complete semantic highlighting.

I guess dmd doesn't take as long to compile the file, does it? Does it happen on specific code? Are you able to share it?

I usually try the engine on Visual D and dmd, and semantic highlighting can take a couple of seconds, but it doesn't feel very different from C++.

On 24/03/2020 03:30, Dylan Graham wrote:
> Restarting Visual Studio and terminating the server seems to fix the issue, until it happens again 15 minutes later.

BTW: you don't need to restart Visual Studio, killing dmdserver.exe is enough, it will be automatically restarted and reconnected.

On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>
[snip]

As always - VisualD is highly appreciated Rainer!

A minor issue (typo probably), the installer shows "Install in VS2005" as the 1st option, not "Install in VS2008".

In fact, there is no option for installation to target VS2008, so I suspect this is just a typo since, AFAIK, you don't support VS2005 anymore.

This does not affect me, so no need to fix this on my behalf. Don't know about others, but I suspect VS2008 usage is sufficiently rare that this is not urgent.

On Tuesday, 24 March 2020 at 10:55:28 UTC, ShadoLight wrote:
> On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>>
> [snip]
>
> As always - VisualD is highly appreciated Rainer!
>
> A minor issue (typo probably), the installer shows "Install in VS2005" as the 1st option, not "Install in VS2008".
>
> In fact, there is no option for installation to target VS2008, so I suspect this is just a typo since, AFAIK, you don't support VS2005 anymore.
>
> This does not affect me, so no need to fix this on my behalf. Don't know about others, but I suspect VS2008 usage is sufficiently rare that this is not urgent.

Hmm, I re-checked and it doesn't show VS2010 either... maybe it is picking up that I had to install VS2005 recently to repair some old project that had to remain in VS2005 project format?

In my case VisualD installer only shows VS2005, and then all options from vS2013 onwards (even if not installed).

On 24/03/2020 12:01, ShadoLight wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 March 2020 at 10:55:28 UTC, ShadoLight wrote:
>> On Monday, 23 March 2020 at 09:54:46 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> a new version of Visual D, the Visual Studio extension that adds D language support to VS2008-2019, is available at
>>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> As always - VisualD is highly appreciated Rainer!
>>
>> A minor issue (typo probably), the installer shows "Install in VS2005" as the 1st option, not "Install in VS2008".
>>
>> In fact, there is no option for installation to target VS2008, so I suspect this is just a typo since, AFAIK, you don't support VS2005 anymore.
>>
>> This does not affect me, so no need to fix this on my behalf. Don't know about others, but I suspect VS2008 usage is sufficiently rare that this is not urgent.
> 
> Hmm, I re-checked and it doesn't show VS2010 either... maybe it is picking up that I had to install VS2005 recently to repair some old project that had to remain in VS2005 project format?
> 
> In my case VisualD installer only shows VS2005, and then all options from vS2013 onwards (even if not installed).

Versions before VS2013 are no longer shown, if they are not detected to be installed (the installer already does this for a couple of releases). This is to avoid a long list of ancient versions that very few use and that are only partly supported anyway. The installer even detects VS.NET 2003.