Hi, Does anyone here use Spec# regularly? I would like to know if it is stable and powerful enough before I start using it everywhere. It looks like the syntax is influencing c# 4.0, which will hopefully make it easier to upgrade once 4.0 is released. Thoughts?
+9
A:
I guess it depends on what you mean by "stable". There are two possible interpretations:
- "not crashing"
- "not changing"
I don't know about #1, but if you mean #2, then, well, Spec# has been abandoned and is no longer being developed, so that's probably as stable as you're gonna get.
The techniques and tools that were used in Spec# (the static analysis tool called Boogie and the theorem prover / constraint solver Z3) are now part of a new library called Code Contracts for .NET. The upshot of being a library is that Code Contracts will work for any .NET language: C#, VB.NET, F#, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Lisp, Smalltalk, Boo, you name it. The downside is that you get no language integration, so no nice syntax for contracts.
Code Contracts for .NET will be part of .NET 4.0 / Visual Studio 2010, but unfortunately there will be no DbC support in any of Microsoft's languages.
Jörg W Mittag
2009-01-12 23:40:14
So what makes you say that Spec# was abandoned? I can find no reference to this...
Lucero
2009-04-16 17:54:19
I don't remember whether I heard that on a podcast, a Channel 9 video or maybe a blog post. Basically, nobody is working on Spec# anymore, because they all work full-time on the Code Contracts.NET library now. There might be bugfixes and maintenance releases for Spec#, but there won't be any ...
Jörg W Mittag
2009-04-16 18:17:07
... further development, there won't be a production release (currently it is illegal to use Spec# for commercial projects), and there most certainly won't be any C# 3.0 or C# 4.0 features. All the technology that was developed for Spec# is now in Code Contracts.
Jörg W Mittag
2009-04-16 18:19:08
Also, there has been no release since 2007.
Jörg W Mittag
2009-04-16 18:25:47
The relationship is explained a little bit here: http://Research.Microsoft.Com/Contracts/faq.aspx
Jörg W Mittag
2009-04-16 18:35:47