Note: this post still seems to get tons of hits, and I do get a lot of requests for the source as well. This project was merged into the xamlon project, and is now rotting on some backup disks somewhere : ). There is a new C# parser if that is what brought you here you can read about it here . Not planning to go to swf with it, but feel free... Also, there is NeoSwiff if you are looking for C# to swf, from all I have heard it is an awesome product. Back to the old post...

So I finally finished a long month of work (er, the real work that is) and have been able to get back to the C# compiler this week. I've made a first 'test' pass at generating swf bytecode from csharp input, and it works pretty good -- hey, even the bugs are working! It takes this code and makes this swf. The current generated bytecode is as Actionscript Viewer friendly as possible (world's best tool btw!). The code is not efficient at all, there's not even constant folding yet. The next version will be very different though - you can really optimize with all the info a C# file gives up... Try it here if you like.

It just uses stub code now for the flash access part (just a few drawing API commands, and a fake console), but that should end up being a pretty clean library. Maybe 'unsafe' code is overkill for that (that was plan A), a Swf.Native namespace that called each one with a (params object) arg list might be enough. The idea being almost no one would use that, everyone would use the level above. Eg: new Movieclip() or new Button() which would look much like a pared down windows forms class (modeled on the compact framework I think). On the visual side, the graphics/timelines are all parsing/generating (from/to swf, svg and emf), though I do have some work on fonts iirc, and other things I'm sure. Huge amount of glue work too (that is combining, not sniffing). The graphics are all stored in an 'meta' graphics format I call 'sma' (simple media abstraction) and the code is all stored in the CSharp Dom from the compiler. It will be possible to generate swf, svg, and .net files from the same code, eventually...

While you technically don't need the Microsoft csc compiler to use this, my compiler supplies virtually no error info. Of course maybe you don't make mistakes when you program. What I do (the bat file is set up for this) is compile in csc first, then if there aren't errors, convert the same C# code to an swf, and if that went ok, launch the swf to view. It only handles single files at this point, that is just a mechanics thing as I finish that part, but just to know...

Overloading (const & method) is working, though I'm not yet differentiating between long/int/uint, nor float/double (there are only ints and reals). Static members, are working (maybe only on methods and fields). Enums work, though I haven't written Attribute classes, which keeps the [Flags] attribute from compiling. Arrays and jagged arrays, are in, but could still be buggy. Then the usual expressions/stmts etc. A lot of things I thought were going to be problematic ended up being not too hard. It is amazing how much easier it is when you have access to all the metadata in advance (eg - max number of params that will be used in all the possible overloads, etc).

On the 'not in yet' side is inheritance... I think I can just use the prototype inheritance, though I'm debating writing custom super code or not. Shouldn't be hard anyway. Also missing (and most requiring some custom code), events, delegates, using, goto/labels, indexers, operator overloads, structs (hmm), try/catch, as/is (some type reflection stuff is in though), ref/out, and attributes. More I'm sure, that is just on the current todo list.

Bugs are VERY easy to find at the moment ; ). Maybe in a few weeks I'll get some kind of bug list going, but until then there would be no point in mentioning ones you find unless they seem major. If you find this super crappy please wait a bit, it will get much more solid within the month (this is basically the first three days of swf bytecode gen).

Oh, and you can download it here, it works on the cs file, and you can run it by clicking the bat file.. Requires .Net of course, ideally the csc compiler as well. Did I mention it is full of bugs?