What's New in the Visual Basic Compiler

This topic describes the new compiler options and other compiler changes included in Visual Basic 2008.

Friend Assemblies

You can now make members marked as Friend available to other assemblies by identifying the other assemblies as Friend assemblies. You use the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute to identify one or more Friend assemblies for your assembly. This applies to both signed and unsigned assemblies. For more information, see Friend Assemblies (Visual Basic).

New Command-Line Options

Visual Basic 2008 includes two new compiler options:

• The /optioninfer option enables local type inference in variable declarations. For more information, see Local Type Inference.

• The /moduleassemblyname option specifies the name of the assembly that a module will be a part of. For more information, see Friend Assemblies (Visual Basic).

Relaxed Delegate Conversion

Relaxed delegate conversion enables you to assign subs and functions to delegates or handlers even when the signatures are not identical. This change makes binding to delegates consistent with the binding allowed in method invocations. For more information, see Relaxed Delegate Conversion.

See Also

Concepts

What's New in the Visual Basic Language

Change History

Date	History	Reason
July 2008	Added section about relaxed delegate conversion.	Information enhancement.