Let's say we have a team that works on many different projects. Each team member uses different set of visual/non-visual controls/components during it's development cycle. Since Delphi requires each component to be compiled and installed globally in the IDE, how to manage this situation while working with project which was started by the other team member?
It would be great if I could checkout the sources of a project from the version control and have the ability to compile it immediately. I don't care or sometimes don't know what visual or non-visual components are required for this project, I guess they all should be included in the project sources.
Maybe there are some tools which could read main project file or directory and compile/install all the needed components on project loading (and uninstall them when project is closed)?
How do you handle this issue in Delphi?
In our company, we have the same problem.
We solve this by forcing everyone to have all necessary library paths added to their delphi ide.
We are using an additional sdk/framwork repository which containins all components/sdks/frameworks of everyone .
We keep a single text file, listing all libs with its version, install infos, etc.
Everyone checks their wanted libraries, so we do not have double libraries or different versions.
Since we all work under Windows and since Delphi keeps its paths and (afaik) installed-components informations in the registry, we extracted these informations.
We store for each used delphi version a .reg file within the sdk repository trunk.
So, if someone changes a framework, he updates the informations for everyone in the .reg files and commits it.
now, if someone wants to setup their dev-machine, they check-out the sdk, adds the e.g. xe2.reg informations to their registry, then check out the project and ... tada. compiling.
We have not tried to extract the "installed components" packages. thats on our to-do list.
An alternative would be to keep a batch file for building and installing all sdk packages at once. But i do not know if installing components via commandline is possible in delphi.
Something like the JEDI installer would be nice. The installer detects installed Delphi versions and builds & installs everything nicely.
A freely configurable version would be nice, so add all sdks -> install on each version.. perfect.
Anyone who wants to compile a given project must first install any components that project is using. There is no getting around that, unless the project directly includes the components source code and instantiates the components in code instead of using a DFM. AFAIK, there is no IDE tool that will automated component (un)installation on a per-project basis for you.
It's very wise to constraint which components and libraries that will be used by your team. If each member decide which component they will use, your final executable or packages will grow a lot and you can have some incompatibilities between libraries.
Besides, you can have extra costs buying and updating libraries that are very similar. Remember that each time Delphi is updated, you should buy new licences from most of that libraries.
So the best approach is:
ask which libraries each developer are using and discuss with them the real need of each one;
catalog those library required and install them on the machine that you will compile your final code;
Related
We have a software package which is about 16 years old. It's gone through just about every version of Delphi (besides .NET ones). Over the years, things have become very confusing when it comes to cross-referencing and keeping proper setup for additional packages (like third-party libraries). I was wondering if there is some standard practice when it comes to keeping large projects (and groups of projects) like this organized.
So to explain the current setup...
This is a multi-application system. Meaning, there are 12 executable projects (and a few DLL and service projects) involved. We also keep things in SourceSafe and multiple developers work on the same code on different computers. All of these projects are more-so dumped into a central folder. The "Root" folder contains THE major EXE project (along with about 20 folders, all containing units and forms) and it almost seems like an endless hierarchy of folders and files. This one project alone has half a million lines of code involved.
Then all the additional applications aren't necessarily separated properly from this major project. Each of these projects has its own folder based in the main project's root.
The two major concerns of mine are:
How to properly set up the DCU files so that they aren't mixed in with the projects? DCU's should NOT be placed in the SourceSafe (and any similar file, for that matter) or otherwise, any file compiled from the project. Visual SourceSafe makes files read-only when they're not checked out, and DCU files (and EXE files and more) cannot be written to in this case. So how to properly separate any of such file to a remote location to avoid any mixture with the source code?
How to properly set up packages and libraries? We have the following:
QuickReports 5.05
NativeJpg library V302 -
Another anonymous reporting library
Our own component package, which requires QuickReports, NativeJpg, and the other anonymous library
All 4 of those libraries are stored in completely different places of each computer, and need some centralization. The biggest pain of setting up each new developer's computer is locating these from the lead developer's computer and copying them to the same place on each other computer (and making sure the library path is correct, etc.).
We also need to keep completely separate environments for different versions of Delphi on the same computer. This means a copy of the projects on each computer, a copy of packages and libraries on each computer, a copy of the projects and packages and libraries in the SourceSafe, etc. Each computer needs to have an identical setup. We already utilize environment variables to direct our projects where to look for certain project files (and libraries).
Another new concern: XE2 introduces 64bit capabilities. We don't plan on 64bit compiling yet, but we certainly will in the future. How do I properly differentiate 32bit from 64bit in all these projects?
What I'm really asking for is a reference to a good tutorial on how to optimize such an environment and keep it organized the best. I don't expect anyone to take the time and answer all this in the question. The projects are over 15 years old, have had the hands of 200+ developers from around the world in it, and has a LOT of cross-referencing between projects. For example, one project may use a unit from another project, and vice-versa. I personally don't like this concept, but I also didn't design it to begin with. I've been given the task to get this system organized and thoroughly documented how to set up Delphi on a new computer for new developers to work on our projects. As I'm looking at our projects (as I'm not necessarily a developer of the system, but am being pulled into development), I'm seeing a lot of confusion in how the code is organized.
I am assuming that possibly Embarcadero has some guidelines and standards on setting up such an environment?
Location of DCU files
Regarding the DCUs that are the output of the compilation process, you should specify a DCU output directory in each project file. The default value for this, in the latest version of Delphi would be fine: .\$(Platform)\$(Config). This results in sub-folders of the project directory like this: Win32\DEBUG or Win64\RELEASE.
If you set-up your project files using option sets then you will be able to control this setting (and all others) from a small number of option files.
Location of 3rd party code
You should always use 3rd party library as code. If the vendor charges more to receive the library as code, pay up. Once you have done so you simply include the source code into your version control system (VCS) and treat it largely the same way as you treat your own code. I say largely because you should avoid modifying it.
Once you have all your code in the VCS then you can put the entire source code onto a new machine with a single checkout operation.
Organisation of your projects
I personally have a strong aversion to using compiler search paths. I don't use them and include every unit that is required in a project in the .dpr file.
If you do use search paths then you make it impossible to work on variant projects.So for example, suppose you have a client that has discovered a bug in the version of the software you released 2 years ago. You would like to address that bug by releasing an upgrade to the 2 year old version of the software. It is perfectly plausible that asking them to upgrade to the latest version is not viable. Perhaps they have not paid for the upgrades. Perhaps the full upgrade has breaking changes that they do not want to tackle right now. A perfect example would be all the Delphi developers still using Delphi 7.
Now, having motivated the scenario, how would you create a build environment for the 2 year old project? If you are using search paths then they will refer to today's libraries. You would be forced to change your search path, or copy the old libraries over the top of today's libraries.
That entire headache is trivially side-stepped by not using search paths and by including all your source in the VCS.
What you should be aiming for is to be able to checkout any historic version of your program and have it build immediately. You should be able to do this with full confidence that you are building identical software to what was built at the time that version was released. This also requires you to have build automation but I can't imagine you are lacking that for a project of this size.
I'll address folder organisation. This comes from a software suite which has 50+ exe's and dll's and plenty third party libraries, so I guess I know where you are coming from...
We use Perforce as a source control system, so my default workspace's root folder is called Perforce, but I also have a couple of other workspaces set up and they are in Perforce2, Perforce3, etc.
General folder setup (starting from the workspace root folder)
General
Components
Delphi
Indy
Indy9
Indy10
MadCollection
v2.5.8.0
v2.6.0.0
Plugins
Releases
Released
... a folder for each release we publish ... (and equal to a branch in Perforce)
Work
Acceptance
Sub1
Sub2
My Environment library path in the IDE is empty (not even the BDE standard paths are in there). This ensures that a project's paths declare all path's needed and that projects are not reliant upon a particular machine's IDE setup.
We have an environment var (ie MRJ) set up in our IDE's that points to "General\Components\Delphi" so in a project's options we declare the paths to our components as $(MRJ)\MadCollection\2.6.0.0.
General holds IDE plugins and components used by our projects. We keep all versions we use in source control. That way when I have to switch back to an old release to track down a problem, I can simply pull it and build it as its library paths will still point to the version of the components that this specific release needs.
The organisation of folders in a particular work branch (Acceptance or one of its subbranches) follows this pattern:
General
Includes
MainComponent1
Project1
Project2
Shared
MainComponent2
Project3
Project4
Shared
Shared
Windows
SoftwareSuite
Scripts
Tools
MainComponent1
Project1
Dcus
Project2
Dcus
MainComponent2
Tools
Tool1
Dcus
Tool2
Dcus
The General folder holds all platform independent sources/files, the Windows folder holds all Windows specific files. Each component can hold multiple projects and will have a share folder for sources shared between those projects. The shared folder directly under General holds sources shared by all projects. The Windows folder is set up in a similar manner.
Note that each project has its own dcus folder. This is configured in the project options. As the path can be entered as .dcus, we (at least I) have this set up as the default for any new project. Each project sending its dcus to a unique folder ensures two things:
it is easy to keep dcu's out of version control by simply setting up a filter in your version control software.
more importantly it ensures that compilation/build of a project never interferes with the compilation/build of another project. I can safely change settings and build knowing that I won't be bothered by dcu's lying around from a previous build from another project.
I recommend the following practices:
Keep your library path simple, and make sure everything in the library path is either a folder that ships with delphi, or a DCU binary (library) folder in your d:\Components\ folder.
Use a MODERN type of version control. I recommend Mercurial over others. Source Safe is crap, stop using it.
Back up your environment (export registry keys etc) and restore it to the other developer PCs in a standardized way. You can keep a few .reg and .cmd (batch) files around to automate setup of a new system. you can put these scripts in your component repository in your version control system.
Outside the scope that was largely discuss before, I would recommend :
Unit testing - with DUnit for example
Continuous integration. Just to be sure that all these projects can compile on another machine and that tests are ok.
So this is heavily related to project organization and VCS strategy.
For a similar setup, a company I worked for found this configuration useful:
all third party libraries (components etc.) go to a fixed location (C:\Delphi\name-version)
Delphi projects can be checked out from version control anywhere (drive C: or D: and folder name does not matter), as all projects and scripts use relative paths
all projects are sub folders of one main project folder so checking out this one will bring the Delphi projects and other relevant resources to the workstation, and a version control update is easy to do
we use a build script (written in Apache Ant) which sits in the main folder, and iterates over all folders to build the Delphi apps and run unit and integration tests against a development database server, to verify all changes work before checking in to source control
the build script can also be run automatically on a build server (Hudson CI) on every commit to see if something broke
And a note about component libraries: avoid package installation where possible, prefer creation of components at run time. If you quickly need to apply a fix to a five year old version of a project, uninstalling / installing a dozen of packages can become frustrating. At least for non-visual components, run-time creation is a huge time saver.
Checking in third party code in source control can be very helpful, for example to share fixes which are not yet available as new official releases. Best practices are covered in the Subversion documentation chapter Vendor Branches.
Plus, with Subversion you can use svn:externals to place a specific version (tag) right into a project directory structure. This can be used both with third party library and with your own source code, and makes dependency management easier and workstation setup easier.
p.s. the Ant build script defines the search paths for everything, so it is 'the reference' for all developers how to configure the IDE, where to put the third party libs and which compiler flags to use
p.p.s. your project sounds like a lot of fun - I am open for contract work :)
My team use virtualization and when we see back it was a real good move.
We use MacBook Pro laptops and VmWare Fusion, but I'm sure other packages work fine as well like VirtualBox or VirtualPC.
It is always a good feeling to know that when a new developer starts or an old installation got trouble it is just to copy a new VM image from the master image and the setup is exactly as the original. The master image is stored on a fast USB2-disk. Now when Thunderbolt and USB3 is coming it would be even faster to copy an image. And there is no real concern about performance on a modern computer as long as there is memory. 8 GB should be enough to run 2 images in parallell. Another advantage of virtualization is that it is so easy to try What if scenario. Experiment with different configuarations and versions without any risk to disturb the real working environment.
Btw I also think that SourceSafe is crap... :-)
Somé tips:
Make one groupproject file for all the apps belonging to the project, each app in its own dir under the groupproj file
You should be able to specify which file types to include into your version control system. Make sure you set Delphi to write DFM files in text format.
You could tell Delphi to output DCUs in subdirs named 'dcu' under each app (less visaul clutter).
Third party stuff often insists on installing in distinct locations, there's not much you can do about it. Make a document describing how to setup a complete working environment and keep it up-to-date
Develop in virtual machines. A new developer gets a copy of the VM.
Maintaining for different Delphi versions? Rethink that, try to go to one version. If you absolutely must have two groupprojects and directory structures for each version. [I'm assuming you're not compiling the same app with two Delphi version, that's developer hell]
Delphi XE2 will output to different 32/64 subdirectories, that should give no problems.
With the desire to be able to reproduce a given revision of a project that is utilizing 3rd party visual component packages, what goes in SVN and what's the best way to implement/structure the SVN repos?
For non-visual components, the rule seems simple to ensure no reliance on outside repos - "no svn-externals reference to any outside repo allowed". I have a shared repo that I control, which is the only 'svn-externals' reference allowed. This makes it easy to implement and share these types of runtime itemss with sourcecode in different SVN projects. Any reference this internal shared repo is by 'svn-externals' using a specific revision number.
Visual packages seem to go counter to being able to be version controlled easily as they may have to be reinstalled at each revision. How to best create a SVN project which is able to be recreated later at a specific revision number...is there a recommended solution?
Previously we didn't worry about 3rd party components as they don't change often and we never had a real good solution. I was wondering if others have figure out the best way to handle this problem as I'm doing a spring cleaning/internal reorganization and wanted to do it 'better' than before.
Technically, the RTL/VCL source should also be in the SVN repo as well (if there's a Delphi hotfix/service pack released.)
My solution will likely be to create a virtual machine with a particular release of the Delphi environment with all visual controls installed. As we add/update visual controls, or update Delphi with hotfixes/service packs then we create a new version of the virtual machine. We then store an image of this VM revision on a shelf somewhere. Is this what you do? Does the Delphi activation/licensing work well (or at all) in this scenario?
Thanks,
Darian
You can prepare "start IDE" (and possibly "build") scripts for your projects and maintain them as project evolves in repository.
Regardless of your decision about keeping components in separate repositories and using externals, or including them in a single repository with possible branching, you should also include compiled bpl files for every component build and for every branch prepared for a specific Delphi version.
You should definitely try to keep most (if not all) of paths relative, in a worst case use environment variables to point to your root project dir.
Start IDE script allows you to keep each project and Delphi version environment spearately configured on a single Windows installation.
It should include necessary registry keys for your project and Delphi:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-${DelphiRegKey}\Disabled Packages]
[-${DelphiRegKey}\Known Packages]
[-${DelphiRegKey}\Library]
[${DelphiRegKey}\Known Packages]
"$(BDS)\\Bin\\dclstd${CompilerVersion}.bpl"="Borland Standard Components"
"$(BDS)\\Bin\\dclie${CompilerVersion}.bpl"="Internet Explorer Components"
"$(BDS)\\Bin\\dcldb${CompilerVersion}.bpl"="Borland Database Components"
(...)
"${CustomComponentPack}"="Custom Components"
[${DelphiRegKey}\Library]
"Search Path"="${YourLibrarySourceFolder1};${YourLibrarySourceFolder2}"
(...)
You can then prepare batch file:
regedit /s project.reg
%DelphiPath%\bin\bds -rProjectRegKey Project.dpr
Where ${DelphiRegKey} is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland(or CodeGear in newer versions)\ProjectRegKey.
Basically it is easier when you will dump your current working configuration from registry, strip it from unnecessary keys, change paths to relative and then adapt to make it work with your project.
In such configuration, switching between projects and their branches which have different sets of components (and/or possibly using different Delphi version) is a matter of checking out a repository only and running the script.
Fortunately for us, we don't have to worry about a hotfix/service pack; we're still on Delphi 5. :D
Sigh, there was a time when an entire application (settings and all) would exist within a single directory - making this a non-issue. But, the world has moved on, and we have various parts of an application scattered all over the place:
registry
Windows\System
Program Files
Sometimes even User folders in "Application Data" or "Local Settings"
You are quite right to consider the impact of hotfixes/service packs. It's not only RTL/VCL that could be affected, but the compiler itself could have been slightly changed. Note also that running on the same line of thought, even when you upgrade Delphi versions, you need to build using the correct version. Admittedly this is a little easier because you can run different Delphi versions alongside each other.
However, I'm going to advise that it's probably not worth going to too much effort. Remember, working on old versions is always more expensive than working on the current version.
Ideally you want all your dev to be be on main branch code, you want to minimise patch-work on older versions.
So strive to keep the majority of your users on the latest version as much as possible.
Admittedly this isn't always possible.
You wouldn't want to jump over to the 'new version' without some testing first in any case.
Certain agile processes do tend to make this easier.
By using a separate build machine or VM, you already have a measure of control.
TIP: I would also suggest that the build process automtically copy build output to a different machine, or at least a different hard-drive.
Once you're satisfied with the service pack, you can plan when you want to roll it to your build machine.
It is extremely important to keep record of the label at which the build configuration changed. (Just in case.)
If your build scripts are also kept in source control, this happens implicitly.
When you've rolled out the hotfix/service pack, fixes to older versions should be actively discouraged.
Of course, they probably can't be eliminated, but if it's rare enough, then even manual reconfiguration could be feasible.
Instead of a VM option to keep your old configuration, you can also consider drive-imaging.
To save on the $$$ of VMWare LabManager, look for a command-line driven VM Player.
You might have to keep 2 "live" machines/VMs, but should never need more than that.
It's okay for an automatic build script to fail because the desired configuration isn't available. This will remind you to set it up manually.
Remember, working on old versions is always more expensive than working on the current version.
Third Party Packages
We went to a little bit more effort here. One of our main motivations though was the fact that we use about 8 third party packages. So doing something to standardise this in itslef made sense. We also decided running 8 installation programs was a PITA, so we devised an easy way to manually install all required packages from source-control.
Key Considerations
The build environment doesn't need any packages installed, provided the object and/or source files are accessible.
It would help if developers could fairly easily ensure they're building with the same version of third party libraries when necessary.
However, dev environments usually must install packages into the IDE.
This can sometimes cause problems with source compatibility.
For example new properties that get written to IDE maintained files.
Which of course brings us back to the second point.
Since Third Party packages are infrequently updated, they are placed within a slightly different area of source-control.
But, NB must still be referenced via relative paths.
We created the following folder structure:
...\ThirdParty\_DesignTimePackages //The actual package files only are copied here
...\ThirdParty\_RunTimePackages //As above, for any packages "required" by those above
...\ThirdParty\Suite1
...\ThirdParty\Suite2
...\ThirdParty\Suite3
As a result of this it's quite easy to configure a new environment:
Get latest version of all ThirdParty files.
Add _DesignTimePackages and _RunTimePackages to Windows Path
Open Delphi
Select Install Components
Select all packages from _DesignTimePackages.
Done!
Edit: Darian was concerned about the possibility of errors when switching switching versions of Design Packages. However, this approach avoids those kinds of problems.
By adding _DesignTimePackages and _RunTimePackages to the Windows Path, Delphi will always find required packages in the same place.
As a result, you're less likely to encounter the 'package nightmare' of incompatible versions.
Of course, if you do something silly like rebuild some of your packages and check-in the new version, you can expect problems - no matter what approach you follow.
I usually structure my repository in SVN like this:
/trunk/app1
/trunk/comp/thirdparty1
/trunk/comp/thirdparty2
/trunk/comp/thirdparty3...
I have, right in the root folder (trunk) a project group (.groupproj, or .bpg on old delphi) that contains all my components. (allcomponents.groupproj).
Installing on a new machine, means opening that package, and installing the designtime components. That's a drag on all versions of Delphi older than 2010, but 2010 and XE have a lovely feature so you can see at a glance, which components are designtime components.
I also, sometimes, will save myself the trouble of installing those components by hand, by making a build.bat file, and a regcomponents.bat file. The regcomponents just runs regedit , and imports the keys needed to register all those components, after build.bat has built them, and everything else.
When you move up from one delphi version to another, it's sure good to have both a batch and reg file, and a group project, to help you. Especially if you have to go through and do a lot of opening of project/packages and saving them as MyComponent3.dpk instead of MyComponent2.dpk, or updating the package extension from 150 to 160, or whatever your packages do.
My computer crashed recently. We have a Delphi app that takes a lot of work to get running.
One of my co-workers has it all installed still. Is there a way to copy the stuff stored in the palette? And the library paths?
I am using Delphi 5 (I know it is very very very old)
That information is stored in the Registry. I don't know exactly how Delphi 5 does it, but try looking for a key called HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5 or something like that. You'll find all the registration information under that key, including a list of installed packages. You can export the keys to a registry file, copy it to the new computer and install it.
Standard disclaimer: Mucking around in the registry manually can be risky if you don't know what you're doing. Be very careful, and if this solution causes your computer to crash, your house to burn down, or demons to come flying out your nose, it's not my fault.
Try CNWizards which has an export functionality for your IDE settings. You can use the same tool restore them on the new machine. We use it to get the same settings on every development machine. In that way we can ensure that all builds are the same, regardless of who built it.
Based on my experience of having done this a few times(!), the most important registry keys are:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Known Packages
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Library
and possibly
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Known IDE Packages
and maybe
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Palette
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Palette Defaults
So long as you have done a standard D5 installation first.
It's easier/more reliable to let the IDE fill in the other bits as you start using it and you change options as appropriate. Some component packages, eg madExcept, DevExpress etc are often best re-installed using their own installers anyway.
Unless you're going to have multiple users on the same machine using Delphi then the HKLM stuff isn't really all that important - I don't think.
As a related aside - I have learned that a good way to handle this is to build a FinalBuilder script (or similar) to set up my Delphi environment each time I decide to use a new machine/installation. I copy/download/checkout (which can be done in FB too) all package source then use FB to compile it, copy it, create dirs, and fill in the appropriate registry keys etc. I always get a consistent environment and makes it much easier to rebuild individual components or packages as and when they get upgraded too. The items can also be put into the script in 'dependency order' so that you know to re-compile a dependent package if something else changes. I now have a single FB sciprt that builds D5, D2007, D2009, D2010 environments and packages of all my main components, all depending on which compiler(s) I'm interested in which I indicate by a simple variable. Well worth it.
Seems to have just worked for me on a Win 7, SP1 and Delphi 5
Logged as user with Delphi & 3rd party components installed.
registry export
hkey current user\software\borland
(no other borland products so selected Borland)
rather than Borland\Delphi\5.0)
Logged into pc as new user.
Did not start Delphi5 (i.e. never started for this user).
Regedit File, Import
Started Delphi all components, including lots of 3rd
party, present.
Project compiled as expected under new user.
Installing third-party components always take a long time specially if you have large ones, but also it take more time if you setup the environment in more than one computer.
And I'm thinking to add them to the Version Control (Subversion), so it will be always easy to checkout the project with all it's required components.
So how you manage that, and what's the best practice to manage them inside the VCS?
Also consider some of these third-parties come without source but as Delphi libraries. (BPL).
If we have the source, then we include that in our repository, under a separate folder.
If we don't have the source, then we just keep the most recent binaries (bpl, dll, whatever) in the repository, and include installation / usage instructions in a setup document.
It looks like this:
\root
\third_party_stuff
\vendor1 --we *do* have the source for this
\src
\bin
\vendor2 --we *do* have the source for this
\src
\bin
\vendor3 --we don't have the source for this one
\bin
\our_stuff
\project1
\src
\bin
\project2
\src
\bin
With Subversion, I use the externals feature. It makes it easy to use the third-party stuff in multiple projects; when you check out a project, you get the external dependencies as well.
If you don't have it already, you should get a copy of Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion. It's a great book about Subversion functionality and how to do things. While it references SVN from the command-line, the info is also easily translatable to the GUI in TortoiseSVN.
For reinstalling the components into Delphi for older projects, I usually export the registry entries for whatever version of Delphi used into the project's folder and then check that .REG file into Subversion along with the project. You can easily check out the project, export your existing Delphi registry section for the corresponding version of Delphi, import the .REG file from your project source folder, and then start Delphi with all of the components installed.
As far as the "binary BPL" issue, shame on you! If you have projects depending on third-party tools, you should buy the source for them. That way you're protected against that company going out of business, or dropping support for the components, or new releases of Delphi that aren't compatible. I always get source for third-party components; if the source isn't available, I find a different product or write the code myself. It's called self-preservation. :-)
Firstly, I'll agree with both Ken and Fabricio that you must have the source code for all components you are using in a project. Anything else is just asking for trouble.
We don't use Subversion for our Source Control, but I'm guessing what we do would still be applicable...
Each project that we work on has a full copy of all components (source) used in that project. When we release, we create a release branch that includes the components as well as the project source. Each project includes it's own BPL directory.
We always create separate shortcuts to run Delphi for each project (or branch of a project) that we want to work on, and use the -R command-line parameter to set a unique Registry key for the Delphi settings for that project.
We then make sure we override the Path environment variable within Delphi to point to our project BPL directory instead of the normal Delphi BPL directory.
We set the BPL and DCP output directories for all components to be the local project BPL directory.
This allows us to have multiple versions of Delphi, with multiple versions of projects using different versions of components without any problems.
I agree with Ken White on this: delphi 3rd party components' used in production code
must have the source code
Period. Compiled binaries-only distributions are for evaluation purposes ONLY. It's our policy here.
As for the question: I actually does not put them on VCS. Actually I use the latest version that my projects compiles and works. The mess with system, search, library, etcetera... paths doesn't worth. 2 JVCL on the same machine or comimg back and forth versions by any new project? ARRRRGH.
If I have to use an old version to a maintenance system, drop a new VM and install the latest version. It works? Ok. Not? It stay on the VM until I discover a way to integrate on the main environment.
One version of each thing is more than enough.
It's worth mentioning that some companys like LMD offer remote access to their own SVN repository for customers with support subscription. I find that a good way of getting fast bugfixes for critical issues.
Is there a way to select designtime packages on a project bases?
Packages are very useful in large project to keep the build time acceptable, but they are a real pita in those large projects too. When one developer adds a new package, it breaks to build for all other until they install the new package on their machine. And then there is versioning of the packages ...
So has anyone a proper solution for this? (it has been bothering me for years now)
At my previous job I wrote a little tool to help us with versioning packages. I really should recreate that tool in my spare time and make it available. The tool was not hard to write though, so maybe you can implement something like it yourself.
Basically it worked like this:
Subversion repo with all the packages in subfolders. Each package folder in the repo had the same subfolders: Lib (for DCUs), Source, Help (if needed)
In the root folder of the repo sits the tool together with an XML file.
The XML file specified all needed information for each package: which folder contained DCUs, which folder contained source, which command needed to be run for the help.
The tool reads in the XML and displays a checklistbox of all the available packages. Installed packages (read from the BDS registry) are marked checked.
The user can make a selection of which packages to install/uninstall.
The tool adds/removes the necessary keys in the BDS registry. It adds the DCU/Lib folder into the search path of the IDE, it adds the source folder to the IDE browsing path, and it registers the help command with a custom IDE expert (This expert provides an extension to the default help menu to launch the help for all the installed packages)
The tool would even check for conflicts and dependencies between packages. For example both version 3 and 4 of Raize Components were available which could not both be active at the same time. Dependencies checking was useful for in-house components that derived from TurboPower AsyncPro (lot of in-house components relied on serial communication via AsyncPro)
A possible extension would have been to be able to save/load the selection of packages and store that selection with each project so you can have only the packages loaded that are needed for a particular project.
I implemented all this when the company was moving from Delphi 5/7 to Delphi 2007. We had a lot of problems with package versioning before and wanted some way to version all the different packages.
This approach offered some nice advantages:
When bugfixes had to be made or new versions of third-party packages were released, one person had to commit the changes to subversion. All the other devs could just do an update from subversion and have the latest version without any problems.
When new component packages would be added to the environment, one person had to commit all the files, change the XML package list and then the other devs could do an subversion update and run the tool to integrate the package easily.
All third-party and custom in-house components were now versioned easily.
By including the DCUs (and other binaries) in the subversion repo, we ensured that all devs used the same compiled version. Before it was possible that different compilations used different settings which caused some components to behave differently.
When all the other devs finally installed Delphi 2007, their packages were setup in less than 10 minutes (most of the time spent downloading everything from the subversion repo; the tool itself could install 20 packages in less than 2 seconds). Before, with the manual installation of all packages for Delphi5/7 it could take up to 2 days to get everything installed.
This wasn't just used for some in-house components alone, the repo also included some of the big component packages: Raize Components, JCL/JVCL (Using their installer instead of the tool though), DevExpress Quantum Grid 3 and 4, TurboPower AsyncPro
This is not easy too do. You can do it though, with the use of a custom registry hack, and a specific bds shortcut per configuration you are interested in:
To use, just create a new shortcut and
modify the command line to pass e.g.
-rMyAlternateBDSReg. Then after launching that once, the reg entry is
created and they can configure that
alternate registry all they want,
deleting packages, etc, without
worrying about messing up the default
install.
From codegear
If you set up a configuration for each project, you can then start the appropriate shortcut for the given project. It's not automatic, but it is better than having everything there all the time.
A nice side effect is that the load times will be improved.
We put the source for our packages in source control along with a batchfile that rebuilds them. If there is a change in the tree for packages then we rebuild them. This doesn't address installing new packages, but there are registry hits that can take care of that, so it is possible that we could include .reg snippets maybe to handle that.