A built-in profiler, a new attributes language and enhanced project analyzer are among the features in RealBasic 3, the cross-platform integrated development environment from Real Software. The IDE for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows began shipping today.
RealBasic 3 now supports attributes—which the company characterizes as compile-time properties—for project items and code items. Attribute names can take the form of either an identifier (which for now are limited to “reserved” or “hidden”) or a string, and can optionally carry a value. An attributes editor retrieves attributes at runtime though the Introspection.TypeInfo class. For class declarations, attributed are inherited from the parent class, but can be overridden by a subclass.
The latest version reportedly also includes numerous bug fixes and enhancements to stability. According to the release notes, RealBasic 3 now lets developers add structures, enumerations a delegates to classes, export modules with classes and interfaces, and save pictures as BMP, PNG and JPEG file formats. A bug also was fixed that caused a crash when trying to compile a project containing a picture if the pic could not be converted to a platform-native type.
On Mac OS X, “the compiler no longer duplicated the extension of Mac bundle names if the name already ends with ‘.app’” read the build notes. Fast performance has been restored on the platform’s FolderItem functions of Count, Item and TrueItem. Folders that contain more than 32,766 items are now supported. However, the notes warn that such folders always should be iterated with an increasing index, or risk “severe performance issues” in the future. Also, a build error is now generated rather than a silent build failure when multiple plug-ins share the same file name.
The RealBasic 3 personal edition is available now for Linux (free), and Mac OS X and Windows (US$100 each). For cross platform development, you’ll need the $500 enterprise edition.
The company also offers downloads of numerous individual items, such as a language reference, user manuals, tutorials, quick start guide and other documentation, example projects for all platforms and add-on information and downloads.