NAME¶
vbnc, vbnc2 - Mono Visual Basic Compiler.
SYNOPSIS¶
vbnc [option] [source-files]
DESCRIPTION¶
(vbnc) is a CIL compiler for the VisualBasic.NET language.
Applications developed on Windows with vbc can execute on Mono and applications
compiled with 'vbnc' can be executed on .NET runtime.
The Mono Visual Basic compiler accepts the same options as the Microsoft VB.NET
compiler. Those options can start with a slash or a dash (/checked is the same
as -checked).
Visual Basic.NET source files normally ends with a ".vb" extension.
Compilation of VB.NET source code requires all the files that make up a
library, module or executable to be provided on the command line. There is no
support for partial compilation. To achieve the benefits of partial
compilation, you should compile programs into their own assemblies, and later
reference them with the "-r" flag.
The Mono Basic compiler generates images (.exe files) that contain CIL byte code
that can be executed by any system that implements a Common Language
Infrastructure virtual machine such as the Microsoft .NET runtime engine on
Windows or the Mono runtime engine on Unix systems. Executables are not bound
to a specific CPU or operating system.
The Mono Basic compiler by default only references these assemblies:
mscorlib.dll, Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, System.dll and System.Xml.dll. If you
want to reference extra libraries you must manually specify them using the the
-r: command line option.
The
vbnc compiler is used to compile against the latest available profile
(currently the 4.0 profile).
The
vbnc2 compiler is used to compile against the 2.0 profile.
OPTIONS¶
- -addmodule:MODULE1[,MODULE2]
- Includes the specified modules in the resulting assembly.
- -codepage:ID
- Specifies the code page used to process the input files from the point it
is specified on. By default files will be processed in the current code
page. The compiler will also automatically detect Unicode/UTF8 files that
have an embedded byte mark at the beginning.
- Other popular encodings are 28591 (Latin1), 1252 (iso-8859-1) and 65001
(UTF-8).
- -define:SYMLIST, -d:SYMLIST
- Defines the symbol listed by the semi-colon separeted list SYMLIST SYMBOL.
This can be tested in the source code by the pre-processor, or can be used
by methods that have been tagged with the Conditional attribute.
- -debug:AMOUNT
- Specify the amount of debugging information to emit. Possible values for
AMOUNT are "full" and "pdbonly".
- -imports:import-list
- Declare global Imports for listed namespaces.
- -ignorewarn:XXXX
- Ignores warning number XXXX.
- -lib:PATHLIST, -libpath:PATHLIST
- Each path specified in the comma-separated list will direct the compiler
to look for libraries in that specified path.
- -main:CLASS
- Tells the compiler which CLASS or MODULE contains the entry point. Useful
when you are compiling several classes with a Main method.
- -nologo
- Suppress printing copyright information on startup.
- -nostdlib, -nostdlib+
- Use this flag if you want to compile the core library. This makes the
compiler load its internal types from the assembly being compiled.
- -noconfig, -noconfig+
- Disables the default compiler configuration to be loaded. The compiler by
default has references to the system assemblies.
- -nowarn
- Makes the compiler ignore warnings.
- -optioncompare:binary, -optioncompare:text
- Select between binary and text string comparisons. The default is binary
string comparisons.
- -optionexplicit[+|-]
- Require explicit declaration of variables
- -optionstrict[+|-]
- Enforce strict language semantics
- -out:FNAME, -o FNAME
- Names the output file to be generated.
- -q -quiet
- Commands the compiler to show only error messages for syntax-related
errors and warnings.
- -resource:RESOURCE[,ID]
- Embeds to the given resource file. The optional ID can be used to give a
different name to the resource. If not specified, the resource name will
be the file name.
- -linkresource:RESOURCE[,ID]
- Links to the specified RESOURCE. The optional ID can be used to give a
name to the linked resource.
- -r:ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2], -r ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2]
- Reference the named assemblies. Use this to use classes from the named
assembly in your program. The assembly will be loaded from either the
system directory where all the assemblies live, or from the path
explicitly given with the -L option.
You can also use a semicolon to separate the assemblies instead of a comma.
- -sdkpath:PATH
- Sets the path to the required framework assemblies (mscorlib.dll and
Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll). To compile to a different profile than the
default, use this option to the path to the mscorlib.dll of the profile
you want to compile to.
- -removeintchecks[+|-]
- Remove integer checks. Default off.
- -rootnamespace:namespace
- Specifies the root namespace for all type declarations
- -target:KIND, -t:KIND
- Used to specify the desired target. The possible values are: exe (plain
executable), winexe (Windows.Forms executable), library (component
libraries) and module (partial library).
- -utf8output[+|-]
- Emit compiler output in UTF8 character encoding. Currently ignored.
- --version
- Shows the compiler version.
- -warnaserror, -warnaserror+
- Treat warnings as errors.
STABILITY¶
As of early 2011, the Mono Visual Basic compiler is still considered beta
software. The compiler is feature-complete (targeting the Microsoft Visual
Basic 8 compiler), however crashes are still occuring, most notably with
incorrect code.
AUTHORS¶
See the ChangeLog for authors
LICENSE¶
The Mono Visual Basic compiler is released under the terms of the GNU LGPL.
Alternative licenses are available from Novell.
SEE ALSO¶
mcs(1),
mono(1), mint(1),
sn(1)
BUGS¶
To report bugs in the compiler, you can file bug reports in our bug tracking
system:
http://bugzilla.ximian.com.
MAILING LIST¶
The Mono Basic Mailing List is available at:
mono-vb-list-request@ximian.com