Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/26
A long while ago, I posted a detailed answer on what functions the default comparers actually were calling to get a feel for if they would apply or not answering delphi – What does the default TArray.Sort comparator actually do and when would you use it? – Stack Overflow.
I needed that information recently because of some sorting issues I bumped into (sorting generic records), so finally a blog post.
First some links to documentation for even more background information:
There is the answer I gave: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Algorithms, Ansi, Delphi, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Encoding, Floating point handling, Software Development, Unicode | 2 Comments »
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:
- You have your digital certificate in a PFX file.
(for testing you can use a self-signed certificate, for the real world you want a certificate leads to a CA).
- You have the Windows SDK installed that provides SignTool.
(in this case, I presume a Windows 7 or 8 x64 machine with the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8 installed. If not, you have to change the path in the various statements, for instance when using the Windows SDK: Download the Windows SDK for Windows 7 and More | MSDN.)
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 2014/11/21
Thanks Ilya Grigorik for sharing this link to 7 CSS Units You Might Not Know About – Tuts+ Web Design Article :
em, rem, vh, vw, vmin, vmax, ex, ch… Good explainer on various CSS units and why and where you’d use them.
Recommended reading.
–jeroen
via: em, rem, vh, vw, vmin, vmax, ex, ch… Good explainer on various CSS units and….
Posted in CSS, Development, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
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:
Read the rest of this entry »
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:
- How the lines of a build event are actually executed
- How parameter expansion works inside build events
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 2014/11/19
A while ago I bumped into a funny problem with Delphi XE.
I moved all the code from the .dpr in a Main unit (the IDE sometimes overwrites part of the DPR).
This normally isn’t a problem, until Delphi re-generates the .RES file. The reason is that this .RES file can contain a manifest which enables Windows theming.
If there is no reference of the Application object in the .DPR, the IDE will remove the Theming manifest from the .RES file, so your application run unthemed.
Three solutions: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Software Development | 6 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/18
This should not be difficult to do, just time consuming. So it is on my research list to see how time consuming: build a TXMLDocument binding for OmniXML.
This is to urge less people to try to parse XML by hand like xml – Copy & Copy does not work correctly with stringlist – Stack Overflow.
–jeroen
via: Delphi, OmniXML – XML binding? – Stack Overflow.
Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Software Development, XML/XSD | 13 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/17
This blog entry shows how I moved my BeSharp.net repository from SVN at BeSharp.codeplex.com to mercurial.
I develop most of my software using Windows, so if you want to perform the steps below (except TortoiseHG) on a *nix or Mac machine, you have to do some backslash to slash replacement, and find out where the mercurial settings file is stored.
The rest is pretty much the same.
Note the aim was to do a one time conversion. If you want to use both SVN and HG at the same time, then HgSubVersion definitely worth looking at.
Step zero: enable the convert extension (once per client machine)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Mercurial/Hg, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, Subversion/SVN, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/13
Steve Maughan posted a great question on G+ last week:
JCL & JVCL – What are the Real Gems in these Tool Sets
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:
- I was creating installation instructions for getting new development machines set-up
- The new machines had to either have a minimum subset of installed Delphi versions + components, or the maximum superset of all the existing development machines
- Sifting through the installed Packages in the IDE, or registry by hand was cumbersome
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 