twinBASIC Update: September 22, 2025

On April 23, 2021, I helped Wayne Phillips introduce the world to twinBASIC at the Access DevCon Vienna conference. I boldly predicted that twinBASIC (along with the Monaco editor) would replace VBA and its outdated development environment by 2025. With that goal in mind, this weekly update is my attempt to keep the project fresh in the minds of the VBA development community.

Every Sunday Monday week, I will be providing updates on the status of the project, linking to new articles discussing twinBASIC, and generally trying to increase engagement with the project. If you come across items that should be included here, please leave a comment below.

Here are some links to get involved with the project:

• Custom twinBASIC IDE Installation Guide
• twinBASIC Discord Server (chat about the project)
• twinBASIC Wiki (list of new features not in VBx)
• GitHub Issue Tracker (report bugs)
• twinBASIC/VBx LinkedIn Group

Highlights

Project Status Update from Wayne

Wayne Phillips posted the following on 21 Sep 25 in Discord (emphasis mine):

There’s a lot happening behind the scenes right now that I’m not able to share just yet. The good news is that everything in progress is very positive and will bring significant long-term benefits to the project.

Additionally, some features simply can’t be delivered in small increments and need more time before they’re ready for a public release. Know that whilst things are quieter than normal, very good progress is still being made. With that in mind, I can confirm the next release is scheduled for 30th September.

Discord Chat Summary

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Overview

The week of September 17-22, 2025 saw significant discussion around twinBASIC's project file limitations and their impact on VB6 migration workflows. The community also celebrated a major milestone with the completion of XYplorer's port to 64-bit using twinBASIC, while Wayne provided reassurance about ongoing development despite a quieter release schedule.

Project File Limitations & VB6 Migration

• wqweto highlighted that lack of external file support is a major barrier to porting VB6 projects, as copy-pasting between IDEs leads to lost changes and discourages migration efforts
• yereverluvinunclebert echoed this concern, maintaining separate VB6 master codebases with twinBASIC copies only for testing due to source control requirements
• The community consensus shows this limitation significantly impacts adoption for developers with existing VB6 projects who need granular source control

IDE Issues & Bug Reports

• Several users reported a menu disappearing bug when opening project settings in windowed mode without the title bar enabled
• fafalone advocated for using the real OS title bar, noting the WebView2 implementation has usability issues like inability to unmaximize by dragging
• waynephillipsea confirmed the next release is scheduled for September 30th and encouraged proper bug reporting procedures

XAML Integration Progress

• deletedewd successfully implemented UI.Xaml.Interop interfaces in a twinBASIC class, creating a bindable vector for XAML controls that responds to real-time collection changes
• The implementation uses a vanilla tB Collection as backing storage with index adjustments, making XAML data binding more practical

Major Community Milestone

• twixydon announced the completion of XYplorer's 64-bit port using twinBASIC, marking a significant real-world application success
• This represents one of the most substantial commercial applications known to be successfully ported to twinBASIC

Conclusion

Despite a quieter release period, the week demonstrated both the challenges and successes of twinBASIC adoption. While project file limitations continue to hinder VB6 migration workflows, the successful completion of major applications like XYplorer's 64-bit port shows the platform's maturity for substantial projects. waynephillipsea's confirmation of positive developments behind the scenes and the September 30th release date maintains community confidence in the project's momentum.

Around the Web

Official Release of tB-Based XYplorer

XYplorer, the venerable file manager replacement utility–originally written in VB6–was recently ported to twinBASIC to provide native 64-bit support.

I announced the beta release during a previous weekly update, but today marks the official release of the generally available 64-bit XYplorer.

Here's the simple announcement from XYplorer developer, Don Lessau, via the twinBASIC Discord server:

Here are the understated release notes for the new version:

XYplorer 28.00 (64-bit) has been released on 22-Sep-2025. Here’s a quick introduction to the main new features:

- This is a BIG maintenance release. Many minor fixes and improvements have been made since the last major release. See the change log (about 2.7 MB) for details.
- This is the first official 64-bit release of XYplorer.

Changelog

Here are the updates from the past week. You can also find this information by visiting the GitHub twinBASIC Releases page.

• No new releases this week.
• The next release is scheduled for 30 September 2025.