ASNA Encore release notes

Version: 4.1.36.0 - GA

Release date: 2025-03-05

Upgrading your version of .NET? Before sure to read this!

If you update your version of .NET, you will need to repair Encore 4.0 and Cocoon 11.4 if they are installed. This ensures Visual Studio's project templates will be available after the upgrade.

This is required because in order for the SDK to resolve properly and the templates to be available to all users, we must install certain files to versioned dotnet directories (currently C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk[version] and C:\Program Files\dotnet\templates[version]). When the repair is performed, we re-install these components to the updated version directories.

.NET (aka .NET Core) and Visual Studio

ASNA Encore 4.1.8.0+ and ASNA Monarch 11.4.34.0+ provide .NET 8 support.

Minimum .NET version: .NET 6
Minimum Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2022 build: 17.8

Platform support

See the ASNA Version Policy for full requirements

You can only install one version of an ASNA Windows product on a single PC. For example, you can't install ASNA Visual RPG for .NET 17.0 on a PC on which ASNA Visual RPG for .NET 16.0 is installed.

General installation tips

We strongly recommend you apply all pending Windows updates before installing any of our Windows products.
Don't install any ASNA Windows products while Visual Studio is running.
For our products that snap into Visual Studio (ie, Visual RPG for .NET Framework, Wings, Mobile RPG, etc.) be sure to install Visual Studio first.

Visual Studio 2022 Editions

Visual Studio 2022 17.4 or higher Professional or Enterprise edition is required with the Papa family.

Visual Studio local help installation

Visual Studio 2022 treats local (offline) as an optional component. As such installing it requires some additional steps:

When installing Visual Studio 2019:

Under the Individual Components tab.
On the Code Tools section.
Enable the Help Viewer component.

To verify the Help Viewer is installed, look at the top of the Help Menu in Visual Studio. The following three options should be visible at the top of the menu:

View Help
Add and Remove Help Content
Set Help Preferences

Changes Since Version: 4.1.27.0

QSys - DataGate.Client

Fixes for linux-based testing.
Add mitigation package reference, update to recent stable packages, and require mitigation SDKs.
Don't allow Windows to index cache artifacts.
Always strong-name sign netfx assemblies.

QSys - Expo

Package reference updates

QSys - Runtime

Allow explicit cast from Indicator to string.
Fix .net 6 package refs.
Implemented support for 'RETURN <value>' from a nested subroutine in a subprocedure.
Fixed bug when setting string values shorter or longer than the available space.
Fixed bug in SetValue always throwing an exception.
Fixed bug in GetString when given length was longer than DS buffer.

RnD - Encore Compiler

Issue proper name for *ENTRY (instead of '?ENTRY') in error message.
Fixed grammar for CASE. It was not detecting properly when a CASE came after a CASEDFT.
Fixed bug in %DATE when the argument is an integer.
Fixed bug in %KDS thinking that the DS fields were localscope.
Allow comparison between bool and declared constant strings in relops and when using COMPARE.
Issue 'division by zero' error when using a constant 0 in a division expression.
Fixed: error messages while creating nodes at parsing time were being lost.
ENUM was throwing when trying to add a blank line.
Validate DIM is at most 99999.
Allow comparisons between booleans and strings.
Validate that RnmFlds new field names are actual names in the program.
Ensure COMPARE works for booleans and indicators.
Fixed Trekker default project type (was exe, now library).
Fixed bug in parameters when Trekker calls XFU converter, it was missing letting tool know to use the Trekker tables.
Fixed ToString method for array types so it distiguishes between DIM arrays and RANK arrays.
Initialize local temp variables to their default value according to type.
Fix the grammar to allow blank lines and comments in between case conditions.
Remove vestiges of non-Encore commands: Beep, ExitApp, DclEvent, DclRecordFormat, DclRecordFld.
Fixed bug in type of exception thrown for a nested subroutine with a RETURN in a procedure.
Initial changes to support RETURN from nested subroutine in a subprocedure: translate RETURN <value> as a throw new SubroutineReturn 'exception' to be trapped by the subrpocedure.
Fix bugs and enhance type handling in %LEN, %DECPOS, and %SIZE.
Ensure default output type is library, both in Encore and in Trekker.
Protect against empty TRY body.
Fix bugs in processing *OMIT parameters.
Fixed missing parentheses around conversions to boolean.
Don't issue two errors for the same issue.
Fix parser crash that may happen when encountering aberrant code.

RnD - Encore IDE

Get update system.text.json and remediate updated analyzer warnings.
Update minimum install targets to 17.8.
Support LIKE keyword.
Enable config-based secondary dbname file.
Fixes for literal value parsing & rendering, metadata operator overloading, support exponentiation operator.

RnD - Encore SDK

Update MSbuild packages.
Fix non-Windows build and deployment.
Add pdbFixer for net 8.