Posted by jpluimers on 2015/01/20
This used to be a great Delphi-only feature that I missed in Visual Studio, but I found the downloadable free extension Favorite Documents extension.
It is a by Sergey Vlasov, who has a whole bunch of free and paid Visual Studio add-ins, extensions and tools.
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/01/14
One of the features that bites me over and over again is the ZEROBASEDSTRINGS that got introduced in Delphi XE3 and is by default ON in mobile compilers and OFF in Desktop compilers.
Back then, Mark Edington showed a small example of the effects:
| procedure ZeroBasedTest; | |
| const | |
| S: string = '012'; | |
| begin | |
| {$ZEROBASEDSTRINGS OFF} | |
| Writeln(S[1]); // shows "0" | |
| Writeln(S.Chars[1]); // shows "1" | |
| {$ZEROBASEDSTRINGS ON} | |
| Writeln(S[1]); // shows "1" | |
| Writeln(S.Chars[1]); // shows "1" | |
| end; |
and then explained:
The XE3 RTL source code has been refactored to be string index base agnostic. In most cases this is done by utilizing string helper functions which are always zero based.
When it is necessary to traverse a string, the Char[] property is often used to access the individual characters without concern for the current state of the compiler with respect to zero based strings.In addition, the “Low” and “High” standard functions can now be passed a string variable to provide further flexibility as needed.
When zero based strings are enabled, Low(string) will return 0, otherwise it will return 1. Likewise, High() returns a bounds adjusted length variation.
The problem is the non-existent forward compatibility of the other compilers (Delphi XE2 and lower).
So if you have library code that needs to work in Delphi versions, you cannot use the High and Low to make the code ZEROBASEDSTRINGS neutral.
Many Delphi developers regularly skip many Delphi versions, so these are still popular:
The result is that library code is full of conditionan IF/IFDEF blocks like these:
| {$ifdef GX_VER240_up} | |
| for Index := Low(input) to High(input) do // for ZEROBASEDSTRINGS | |
| {$else} | |
| for Index := 1 to Length(input) do | |
| {$endif GX_VER240_up} |
–jeroen
via: Mark Edington’s Delphi Blog : XE3 RTL Changes: A closer look at TStringHelper.
Posted in Ansi, Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Encoding, Software Development, Unicode | 8 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/01/07
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/12/30
There is a nice Delphi memory thread at G+ initiated by Tommi Prami for which I added some links to the memory managers:
More interesting comments (most people seem to favour FastMM, as they can get very good performance out of it even in multi-threaded environments) at There have not been much of the Talk of MemoryManagers lately….
Note there is also TBBMM based on TBB, but it seems unmaintained.
Barry Kelly’s memory manager is based on Boehm-Demers-Weiser GC.
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/12/10
Convenient list to decide what to put in your version control system: Delphi File Extensions – Delphi Programming.
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/25
Using Delphi build-events (see my post Delphi prebuild/prelink/postbuild events), you can automate the process of signing your Delphi executables with a digital certificate.
Below the steps for signing Windows executables.
Prerequisites:
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Software Development | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/20
Please someone add the Software on a String blog to DelphiFeeds (:
Great article on testing implementations of interfaces in a generic way. With examples in NUnit and DUnit.
How do I test an interface? Should I even do that? | Software on a String.
And then Stefan Glienke made a great comment at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MarjanVenema/posts/Dgb8WADLwXZ making the DUnit implementation even easier:
But even if you go without that extra base class the cool thing is that you don’t need to restrict your classes to be a TInterfacedObject but specify the interface they need to implement (yay, compiletime type safety) and then you can get rid of the Supports call and directly assign the result of the ctor call to the sut variable.
–jeroen
Stefan’s code:
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/20
Ever since the Delphi build engine got changed to MS Build in Delphi 2007, many people use Delphi build events. Their order is prebuild, prelink and postbuild (or maybe better spelled pre-build, pre-link and post-build).
Before Delphi 2007, you had to fiddler with project groups and dependencies to fake pre-build and post-build events. For an example see Pre and Post-Build Automation in Delphi.
One of the really good things about these events is that build events appear in the output tab of the messages window.
One of the really bad things is that there is hardly any documentation about the build events.
At least two important things are missing:
Let’s explain these. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Event, FastMM, QC, Software Development | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/13
Steve Maughan posted a great question on G+ last week:
The resulting thread is full of people answering with their favorite JVCL and JCL gems.
Recommended reading!
–jeroen
via JCL & JVCL – What are the Real Gems in these Tool Sets I’ve just installed JCL….
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/13
A while ago, I wrote a via PowerShell script to show the component packages (BPL) files for all installed Delphi (actually: BDS) versions (now at List-Delphi-Installed-Packages.ps1) for a couple of reasons:
Note that in the mean time (I queued this blog entry somewhere in 2013) the script has moved to BitBucket, I’ve written more scripts (like Dependencies.bat which is documented in Dependencies.md and Run-Dependend-rsvars-From-Path.bat), all modified all scripts to support all BDS versions I had access to, and a write nice conference paper on Build Automation for Delphi that references the scripts.
Since none of the machines were using pre BDS installations, I could limit the script to BDS 1.0 and up.
The very first (1.0) version of BDS (also known as the Gailileo IDE foundation) was in fact not a Delphi version, but C# Builder 1.0. All Delphi versions since then are based on BDS. The script is based on the BDS registry keys I researched and wrote about in Files in your Delphi settings directory; How to relocate the Favourites on your Welcome page.
Since registry access can be very much flow based, the pipeline architecture of PowerShell is a good fit.
So I wrote a PowerShell script (:
Note Thomas Mueller has written a batch file around the same set of registry keys; the thread there also has some insight in the HKLM versus HKCU keys.
I will explain my script step by step, and start with the most important one: Set-StrictMode -Version Latest. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CommandLine, Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, PowerShell, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 