Visual Prolog 7.3 Upgrade Notes
This topic is under construction
This document describes how to upgrade Visual Prolog projects created by previous versions of Visual Prolog to Visual Prolog 7.3.
If you have problems with upgrading your projects and need additional information, you are welcome to ask questions in Visual Prolog Discussion Forum.
Upgrading from 7.1 & 7.2
- By default, the installation of Visual Prolog 7.3 will not replace any previously installed versions. The new version of Visual Prolog Commercial Edition(CE) will be installed by default to C:\Program Files\Visual Prolog 7.3. The new version of Visual Prolog Personal Edition (PE) will be installed by default to C:\Program Files\Visual Prolog 7.3PE.
You can remove a previous version or continue working with both.
- Visual Prolog 7.3 projects are backward-compatible with Visual Prolog 7.1 & 7.2 projects.
- If you are going to use different versions of Visual Prolog installed at one computer, avoid opening projects by double-clicking on prj6 files.
- Some changes might require automatic updates in Visual Prolog 7.1 & 7.2 projects. Therefore, it is recommended to make the project file (PRJ6) writable before the first build. Also, it is recommended to make copies for all project files first.
- When your open a project in the Visual Prolog 7.3 IDE, it will automatically perform necessary updates.
- After this, it is recommended you rebuild the project with the help of the Build | Rebuild All command and answer "Yes to All" to the message suggesting to add or remove packages / modules.
Note
- Depending on Visual Prolog version, you are upgrading your projects from, some additional actions described below might be required.
Upgrading from 7.0 & 6.x
Alongside with the actions described in the section "Upgrading Projects from Visual Prolog 7.1 & 7.2", some additional actions might be required to upgrade projects from the versions earlier than Visual Prolog 7.1.
- Visual Prolog 7.3 projects are not fully backward-compatible with Visual Prolog 7.0 and Visual Prolog 6.x projects.
Visual Prolog 7.0 and earlier IDE will not allow opening projects modified by Visual Prolog 7.3 IDE.
It is recommended to create a backup copy of your project before opening it by the Visual Prolog 7.3 IDE. - If you are going to use Visual Prolog 7.3 simultaneously with Visual Prolog 7.0 or an earlier version at the same computer, it is recommended to switch the IDE setting "Open Project at Startup" in the previous version OFF, to prevent opening Visual Prolog 7.1 projects in the earlier IDE.
Note that beginning with Visual Prolog 7.1, projects are not opened at startup, and, hence, the setting "Open Project at Startup" is not used anymore. - The following keywords were introduced:
- In Visual Prolog 7.1: properties, try, catch, finally and elseif.
- In Visual Prolog 7.0: if, then, else, foreach and do
That means that they can no longer be used as identifiers.
- Stronger treatment of types introduced in Visual Prolog 7.0 might require some changes in your program: typically change of declarations or insertions of explicit conversions might be necessary.
- Reference domains are not supported since Visual Prolog 7.0. If your project uses reference domains, we recommend to read the "How To Erase Reference Domains from a Project" tutorial.
- G-stack is not used anymore since Visual Prolog 7.0. Hence, all G-stack related predicates have been removed.
- Beginning with Visual Prolog 7.0 some accelerator keys have been changed to comply with Microsoft standards.
- The format of specifying a fully-qualified (i.e. with an arity) predicate with a return value in resolve/delegate predicates from qualifications has been changed since Visual Prolog 6.2: predicateName//N => predicateName/N->. This may cause error messages while building your project in the latest version of Visual Prolog.
- Predicates div and mod have changed their meaning for negative numbers.
In Visual Prolog 6.1
-1 = -5 div 3 -2 = -5 mod 3
Since Visual Prolog 6.2
-2 = -5 div 3 +1 = -5 mod 3
So, each file that contains div or mod in the projects created in Visual Prolog 6.1 should be checked, whether it works correctly. The simplest solution is to replace:
div => quot mod => rem
in all source files.
Upgrading from 5.x
Prolog Development Center provides the Migration Tool that will assist you to migrate your Visual Prolog 5.x projects into Visual Prolog 6.x projects.
After migrating your projects into Visual Prolog 6.x, follow the recommendations above to upgrade your projects to the latest version of Visual Prolog.