Gambas is a programming language for Linux which attempts to mimic the ease of use of Visual Basic while improving on its functionality. Although Gambas is not source code compatible with Visual Basic, it is a BASIC Interpreter with object-oriented extensions. This makes Gambas a good choice for Linux users who want to use their VB knowledge on a GNU basis.

Gambas makes it very easy to build Linux GUI programs (the Gambas IDE is written in Gambas itself.) using the Qt toolkit. There is a Windows version of Gambas which barely runs under the Cygwin environment. Graphical applications do not work under the Windows version.

Developed in Paris by Benoît Minisini since 1999, Gambas is released under the GNU General Public Licence, the current version (January 13th 2005) being 1.0.2 Gambas is included in the Linux Professional Distribution 9.0 from Suse.

'Gambas' is an acronym for Gambas almost means basic (Gambas is also the Spanish word for shrimp.)

With Gambas you can easily:

• use databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL
• build KDE applications with DCOP
• translate your programs into other languages
• offer Visual Basic programs under Linux
• build network solutions

Citations

• "This project aims at making a graphical development environment based on a Basic interpreter, so that we have a language like Visual Basic under Linux."
• "If you pass the responsibilty for the pc operating system only to one company, then this is just the same, as if you would sell the abc or the integers to this company."
• "Still, this Qt-based software is one of the most advanced open source RAD tools available. It is nearly complete and very usable and stable. Benoit's goal is to avoid the development failures of Microsoft Visual Basic. The modern concept of Gambas is available as a graphic at the Web site. Gambas is translated into many languages. To run Gambas applications you need the Gambas interpreter component installed on the user machine."
• Slashdot: Gambas 1.0 Release Candidate Available raindog2 writes "After two and a half years of development, Gambas has become the first Visual Basic-style environment for Linux to enter release candidate status. Anyone who has been frustrated by a lack of production-quality free RAD environments should give it a try."

External links

• Gambas site
• Gambas doc
• Gambas wiki
• miniprograms to test Gambas in German
• A German wikibook to learn Gambas

See also

• Hbasic
• Visual Basic
• hbasic at sourceforge