The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

    20140508-Delphi-2007--Project-Options--Cannot-Edit-Application-Title-HelpFile-Icon-Theming20140430-Fiddler-Filter-Actions-Button-Run-Filterset-now20140424-VMware-Fusion-6.0.3.-no-reclaimable
    More Photos

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,862 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘QC’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Delphi XE2 sanctuary lib galore…

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/02

Anyone who knows how to work around this? It happens every once in a while right after logging in over RDP to a VM with running Delphi XE2 (but similarly also in other Delphi versions like XE7):

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
Access violation at address 74FD82A4 in module 'shell32.dll'. Write of address 00000014.
---------------------------
OK Details >>
---------------------------

With the below stacktrace including the sanctuary which always give me the creeps.

http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=139126 (which – like all IDE submitted bug reports – is private hence the copy at https://gist.github.com/jpluimers/6d8c0f29be107a83e48a5fd035900f74 ).

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE7, Development, QC, Software Development | 2 Comments »

List of “Plain Text Offenders”; hopefully someone publishes a list of https offenders too

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/24

This Plain Text Offenders site lists email screenshots of organisations sending back plain-text passwords they kept on file (According to Robert Love, Idera/Embarcadero should be on the list as well).

It is one of the most horrible things that can be done for a password.

Business and IT do many horrible things, so I really hope someone will start a similar site about SSL Labs F-rated domains. The ones that are so broken that they degraded their https to virtually plain-text http quality.

In the past, a notorious example of this was Embarcadero, who in the past managed to get F-rating or had wrong configurations on the below domains, therefore preventing me from logging in and getting new products from them (which is far worse than them not cleaning up their bug database):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Hashing, https, OpenSSL, Power User, Public Key Cryptography, QC, Security, Signing, Software Development | 3 Comments »

Loading your MAINICON and VersionInfo through plain text .RC resource files.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/19

I like repositories to have as much of the information in text format.

Delphi traditionally puts both the MAINICON and the VersionInfo resources in a binary .res file and also updates that file on almost every recompile.

There are quite a few posts explaining how to get them from text, but a version controlled example works best for me, so there is one at https://github.com/jpluimers/atom-table-monitor/blob/master/ATOMScannerConsole

The trick is to:

  1. put your resources in a text RC file that can be compiled through a resource compiler
  2. add these to your Delphi project via the project manager, so it generated RcCompile elements which instructs the build process to run the resource compiler first:


<RcCompile Include="MAINICON.rc">
<ModuleName>MAINICON.rc</ModuleName>
<Form>MAINICON.res</Form>
</RcCompile>
<RcCompile Include="VERSIONINFO.rc">
<ModuleName>VERSIONINFO.rc</ModuleName>
<Form>VERSIONINFO.res</Form>
</RcCompile>

view raw

Adding-RC-files-to-project-generates-RcCompile-elements-in-the-dproj-file.txt

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Here are the example files:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, QC, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Why sometimes you *want* to to have your DFM files stored as binary

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/25

Delphi Component/Tool vendors have to support a truckload of Delphi and C++ Builder versions which can be a pain: they have to work around problems in Delphi and C++ Builder versions that have long been abandoned by Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero/Idera/…

This means that sometimes the Delphi Component/Tool vendors have to work around stuff in a way normal applications vendors would never do.

Recently I learned that sometimes this can be a painful thing: keeping DFM files in binary state.

I’m not kidding about either the DFM file format nor about supporting old versions:

  • Delphi has supported text based DFM files since like Delphi 2 for most of the features (yes, ‘most’ is the crucial word here) and by default stored DFM files in text format since Delphi 5.
  • For the Component/Tool Vendors, even Delphi 7 makes money though usually less than Delphi 2007 or the C++ Builder side of things.

The ‘most’ applies to this nice ARM compiler bug in Delphi 19.0.13856.4978 (for mere mortals, that’s Update 1 for RAD Studio XE5, Delphi XE5 and C++Builder XE5; I wish vendors would list those numbers/products in a central place):

  • [Android] MsBuild (dccAarm) error when compile FireMonkeyMobile projects with fmx forms
  • Project:  Delphi
  • Build #:  19.0.13856.4978

Source: [WayBack] QualityCentral

That’s why TeeChart still has most DFM files stored as binary files (again the ‘most’ word).

For version control and searching this is a pain, so normal application developers (the ones not using Delphi XE5 Update 1 for Android work) should run convert.exe with the -t (target=text) switch on DFM binary files.

Oh: this is fixed in version 19.0.13856.4978 (yes, that’s XE5 Update 2).

–jeroen

Via:

 

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 2, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Kylix, QC, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Positive: Delphi 10.1 Berlin is out; negative all Embarcadero HTTPS sites still vulnerable to DROWN attack

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/19

The good news: Delphi 10.1 Berlin is out and released in Berlin (note: you might want to rename Delphi 10 Seattle into Delphi 10.0 Seattle).

Some links:

The not so good thing: I won’t be using it for a while as now for like 6 weeks or so, all the embarcadero HTTPS sites have been vulnerable to the DROWN man-in-the-middle attack that has been discovered 20160301.

Which means that even without going around the non-HTTPS partner site, I won’t be able to make a secure connection and install it.

Which gives me more time to play with the Xamarin Visual Studio 2015 integration, the cool stuff that MvvmCross offers and some of the other .NET Goodness at BUILD 2016 – .NET ALL THE THINGS! | Beth Massi

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Development, QC, Software Development, Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio and tools | 6 Comments »

Delphi: disable or change your welcome page to not use the Embarcadero site (as that site has been hacked twice this weekend)

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/14

Initial hack

Initial hack – image via the forums server.

This weekend, the Embarcadero web site was hacked by AnonCoders. Not once (see also [WayBack] G+ link and [WayBack] DelphiPraxis link and [WayBack] image) but at least twice (see also [WayBack] G+ link and [WayBack] image and [WayBack] Delphi Praxis link and [WayBack] image) where the initial hacked simple text “Hacked By AnonCoders ~ Cyber Caliphate” after having been reverted back to the site – hopefully by Embarcadero staff – was replaced with [WayBack] more graphical content later on.

Hack presenting itself in the IDE

Hack presenting itself in the IDE – image via the forums server.

The Welcome Page inside the Delphi IDE uses the Embarcadero web site, so the Delphi IDE Welcome Page was also affected (see also [WayBack] this G+ link).

Because the IDE uses this on-line content, potentially any code could be executed inside the IDE (apart from that page being loaded over http, so any man-in-the-middle could abuse this, but I digress). This imposes a security risk as many developers run the IDE from accounts having more rights than the average user.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, QC, Software Development | 13 Comments »

Please review your DFM files before you commit to version control

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/10/22

Recently I bumped into it again with one of the more current Delphi XE* versions and Delphi 2007: the IDE changing the DFM files without reason.

This time it was in a multi-team environment with many branches and DFM merge hell.

A few examples of properties and components getting changes:

Warren P suggests to review your DFM changes before committing to version control and I completely agree: it is the only way to ensure they are indeed unwanted changes.

There are some stop-gab things you could try, but these only partially help

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, QC, Software Development | 7 Comments »

Delphi: rolling your own code or (dis)trusting the libraries that ship with Delphi?

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/09/09

Over the two decades I’ve come across a lot of Delphi projects.

All of them have one thing in common: even for functionality available in the Delphi libraries, much of that code was self-written.

You even see this in big libraries that have shipped with Delphi bit not originate from the Delphi team. Take Indy: lots of “roll your own” in it.

I’ve made some thoughts about that, and see these main causes with the points below.

What’s your thought on this?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Event, QC, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Delphi on Windows x64: solution when project compiles fine under IDE, but not using MSBuild

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/21

Especially when using Delphi 2007 on Windows x64 system (8.x, 7, Vista, 2012 Server, 2008 Server, …), the Delphi specific .Targets files used by msbuild are simply installed to the wrong location.

A better warning for this is in my BeSharp.net repository: Run-Dependend-rsvars-From-Path.bat thanks to David Millington who wrote this:

If you copy

  • Borland.Common.Targets
  • Borland.Cpp.Targets
  • Borland.Delphi.Targets
  • Borland.Group.Targets

from

  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

to

  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727

then building via the command line works.

The rsvars.bat file is correct.

Note that my batch file checks for all target file sets:

Delphi 2007:

  set requiredTargets=Borland.Common.Targets Borland.Cpp.Targets Borland.Delphi.Targets Borland.Group.Targets

Delphi 2009 and up:

  set requiredTargets=CodeGear.Common.Targets CodeGear.Cpp.Targets CodeGear.Delphi.Targets CodeGear.Deployment.Targets CodeGear.Group.Targets CodeGear.Idl.Targets CodeGear.Profiles.Targets
  if %bdsVersion%==8 set requiredTargets=CodeGear.Common.Targets CodeGear.Cpp.Targets CodeGear.Delphi.Targets CodeGear.Group.Targets CodeGear.Idl.Targets
  if %bdsVersion%==13 set requiredTargets=CodeGear.Common.Targets CodeGear.Cpp.Targets CodeGear.Delphi.Targets CodeGear.Deployment.Targets CodeGear.Group.Targets CodeGear.Profiles.Targets

 

–jeroen

via [WayBack] QualityCentral: Project compiles fine under IDE, but not using MSBuild.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Development, QC, Software Development | 3 Comments »

When Delphi documentation hurts: REST.Response.Adapter.TRESTResponseDataSetAdapter – RAD Studio API Documentation

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/01

A lot of the stuff on the Embarcadero docwiki hurts. For instance most of the REST stuff (I’m not calling it documentation) is just generated scaffolding. Like REST.Json.TJson.

But the TRESTResponseDataSetAdapter has some amazing documenation. About TComponent that is:

TComponent is the common ancestor of all component classes.

TComponent is the base class for all components. Components are persistent objects that have the following capabilities:

IDE integration. The ability to appear on an IDE palette and be manipulated in a Form Designer.

Ownership. The ability to manage other components. If component A owns component B, then A is responsible for destroying B when A is destroyed.

Streaming and filing. Enhancements of the persistence features inherited from TPersistent.

…

To assist the doc team: this is a query for all pages containing “TComponent is the common ancestor of all component classes.”. Feel free to [WayBack] QC or QP it.

–jeroen

via: REST.Response.Adapter.TRESTResponseDataSetAdapter – RAD Studio API Documentation.

Posted in Delphi, Development, Fun, QC, Software Development | 2 Comments »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »