I've been banging my head against this for the past two days and can't seem to make any progress...
Pretty much from one moment to the next, Delphi XE2 won't properly compile one of my projects any more. That is, it actually compiles without errors but at runtime I get resource not found errors for what is essentially the main "form" (it's actually a data module in this case). I have already reverted to older versions of the project from source control that I know were definitely working alright but to no avail. Judging by that it seems it must be something inside Delphi/the IDE itself rather than in the project source. However, I have also not been able to reproduce the issue with a simple test project nor with any other real-life projects... It only happens with this one.
Another strange thing is that when I look at the produced binary with XN Resource Explorer everything looks as it should: The form resource mentioned in the error message is actually there and intact...
At some point I was suspecting this might be caused by a bug in one of the experts I have installed in my IDE (e.g. Uwe's platform and OI experts and VersionInsightPlus, Andreas' IDEFixPack and DDevExtensions, GExperts) but even after disabling all these the problem persisted.
Unfortunately, I am unable to track down exactly when this started to happen as I had been working for some time without actually running the binary, fixing compiler warnings and errors for the x64-target, adjusting build events for updated third-party tools (localization and license protection) and such things...
Has anyone else ever seen anything like this happen? Any more ideas on how to pin this down?
Some more details about the project:
It is an addin for Outlook built using the Add-In-Express framework (i.e. a COM-DLL).
The "main form" is a TDataModule-descendant - we also inserted our own ancestor-class into the hierarchy, i.e. the "addin module" is not directly inheriting from TadxCOMAddInModule - the resources of the custom ancestor forms also appear to be present and intact in the output binary when checking with a resource viewer.
Built without runtime packages for the Win32 and Win64 platforms.
Let me know if you think I missed to mention any other potentially relevant details.
Update:
I have now transferred the sources in question onto a different machine. Interestingly, the DLL I compiled there did not exhibit the problem - on that machine that is... when I transfered it back to the original machine and I tried to call it, the error was back (to stress this: this was the exact same DLL producing a EResNotFound on one machine but not on the other. Of course, once I had discovered this, I also performed the reverse test and lo and behold, the DLL compiled on the original machine works without errors on the other machine...
Seems this might not be a Delphi problem after all... but what is it then?
Differences between the two machines:
Machine 1 (the one were the problem occurs): Windows 7 Ultimate English 64bit with Delphi XE2 Update 4
Machine 2: Windows 7 Professional German 32bit with Delphi XE2 Update 3
On a third machine that is almost identical to the first except that it doesn't have Delphi on it, DLLs produced by both machines work flawlessly.
I am a bit surprised to see your question here. :)
We faced a number of serious issues with recent Update 4 for Delphi XE2. Though we have never run into or been reported of the "resource not found" error, I think this update might be one of the causes. Have you installed it?
One more thing that comes to my mind is images that you use for your Office controls (command bar and ribbon). Probably they got broken somehow, the run-time code cannot load them and reports this error.
Anyway, as you understand, these are just my guesses, if you need our assistance with your office add-in please contact Add-in Express support service, we will try to help.
Update: Seems I was a bit too quick, drawing conclusions. Apparently the Sisulizer solution is also supposed to perform a fallback to the main resource block. I have now taken this issue to the product forum and will report back here, once this is resolved.
Alright, mystery solved at last:
I had turned off the option to "Copy all resources" in Sisulizer in an attempt to reduce the size of the produced resource DLLs and then had forgotten about it...
I hadn't fully realized the implications of the standard Delphi resource DLL approach to localization on which Sisulizer "piggybacks" - especially that it was an all-or-nothing deal: Our previous translation solution implemented a fallback-mechanism that would read any resources not found in the external resource DLL from the host binary instead. This does not appear to be the case with Sisulizer - at least not out of the box... thus, any resource that's not contained in the localized resource DLL does not exist as far as the application is concerned.
I also didn't realize that the mere existence of a file with the same base name as the main binary and an extension matching the current system's default locale (such as .EN or .DE) would automatically cause the VCL to load it...
The machines that did not exhibit the error either still had the older, larger (=complete) resource DLLs on them, or no resource DLLs at all.
Related
From time to time, when I load a project into the XE6 IDE, the following error occurs
This error results in the TZConnection component being removed from the Datamodule for some inexplicable reason. Note that the project has been loading without issue for ages and just out of the blue, this occurs.
Has anyone seen this before and know of a way of stopping it from occuring ?
It also occurs with other components, not always the TZConnection component but mostly ZConnection.
Like I said before, this appears randomly. I could close project A, open project B then close it and return to Project A and bang!, the error occurs.
Any clues ? (note that this also used to occur in Delphi 2007)
The Zeos libraries are themselves causing this problem.
To see why, and to fix it, use Delphi to launch a second instance of Delphi, and debug the issue directly.
I wrote a blog post showing exact steps here.
The key is to set the executable that will be run for your zeos package, be sure to build them in debug configuration, and then click the Run button on the Delphi IDE toolbar. A second delphi instance will start. Open the affected form but be sure to be using the IDE instance that is Being debugged as opposed to the one which is currently doing the debugging, when the exception occurs that is causing your component to delete itself, you will be able to step into the package code and see the problem.
I suspect a DLL-hell path issue. (Multiple copies of Zeos or other core BPL/DLLs in your path.)
Actually, it doesn't sound that inexplicable - it's probably caused by an exception occurring as the DataModule (or some form with db-aware components connected to it via properties) is being loaded into the IDE (see below). Have you tried checking that wherever your ZEOS .BPL files are located is on your system Path? Likewise any .BPLs they depend upon - see the "requires" clause in the .DPK file(s) for Zeos.
This sort of problem arises fairly frequently with flaky DB components, maybe more so than other types of component because db components more frequently involve linkages between datamodules and forms, e.g. when db-aware components on the forms are connected to others on the datamodule.
So, sometimes, whether this sort of problem shows up or not depends on the order in which the IDE will re-open them - try closing the project with only the dm open and then re-opening it. A bit of experimenting with which datamodules and forms are open in the IDE and in which order may help you pin down the problem. If/when you have a reproducible sequence of steps to provoke the problem, report it to the authors.
A fairly reliable way to determine whether the problem is being caused by an exception as a project loads is to run one instance of the IDE inside another. As long as the first ("outer") instance of the IDE has the debugger set to "Break on Language exceptions" it should be able to take you straight to the source of the exception (assuming it occurs, of course) when the project is loaded by the second instance. It may take a few goes to "catch it in the act" of course, but it is hugely satisfying when you manage to. Good luck!
Unlike MartynA I doubt this would be caused by an exception.
I would more likely expect such issues to be caused by windows path environment variable being too long.
Unfortunately still many component vendors and even some programs modify "windows path environment variable` to make their own files accessible by other programs.
And when windows path environment variable fails to provide sufficient information windows will try to find the files in default system directory which is C:\Windows\System32
So I would strongly advise checking the windows path environment variable to check its length.
The easiest way to do this is by simply starting the command prompt and typing in path directive or perhaps path >> D:\path.log to export the path environment variable information into a file for easier reading in case if it is long.
EDIT: BTW I just checked my path environment variable and I see that I will have to do some cleaning because it contains entries for both Delphi XE8 and Delphi XE 10 Seattle file locations even thou I have removed Delphi XE8 from my computer. Not to mention some entries from some programs that I have removed quite some time ago.
I've just downloaded from SVN the DUnit2 code base.
Does someone has compiled it successfully?
What steps/prerequisites I've to follow in order to compile it?
Do someone knows if an already compiled version exists?
thank you
fabio vitale
In the projects directory, find the subdirectory corresponding to your version of Delphi. In it, you should find a project-group file, either DUnit2ProjectGroup.bpg , DUnit2ProjectGroup.bdsgroup or DUnit2Delphi<version>.groupproj. Open it and compile all the projects in order.
Using DUnit2 is pretty much the same as using DUnit.
In case someone else stumbles over this question while trying to make DUnit2 run on Delphi XE (or XE5):
TL;DR:
Dunit2 (official SourceForge source, revision 101) doesn't currently (being as of this writing on 2015-06-01) build successfully on either Delphi XE or XE5.
To make it build on XE or XE5, go get the patch I posted here
Apply it to the source tree. It should now compile and you should be able to open the .groupproj and build all the contained projects successfully.
The patch may be applied with and was created with TortoiseSVN (in case it matters).
Longer version:
Amazingly tonight (2015-06-01) I followed the same steps as Fabio (in 2012 no less) and ran into exactly the same issue (E2010 Incompatible types: 'Pointer' and 'Integer') trying to compile DUnit2 (revision 101 trunk checked out directly from SourceForge) on XE and XE5.
I've come to the following conclusions:
1) There's multiple issues with the head revision with respect to both XE and XE5.
2) The key issue above that Fabio mentions can be fixed by replacing IntPtr with Pointer.
This doesn't actually seem to make any difference in the code as far as I can tell, and the test suites also pass fine on both XE and XE5 after this change, though caveat emptor - I've not looked too carefully either (and also subject to caveats below.)
3) Project search paths being out of date [XE]. Just needed updating/fixing.
4) Missing $DEFINES for XE5 and others, despite some other code being quite aware of XE5
5) Some enhanced TRect stuff that's not available on XE. (The amount is relatively small and relatively trivial to inline to more basic expressions that will compile and is available on XE so was by no means show stopping.)
(Re 3,4 & 5 -- Sadly I get the impression the codebase isn't very well tested against multiple compiler/BDS targets.)
6) Some kind of Application.OnIdle/GUI testing bug (run T_TGUITestCase tests to see it) whereby the GUI automation tests would block unless you keep "feeding" the Windows Message queue by say moving your mouse or pressing the shift key to trigger Application.OnIdle events (repeatable on my Windows 8 XE5 and XE binaries).
Now speaking off the top of my head, and from vague memory from many years ago, I seem to remember having run into this before, and that it is down to a subtle change in behaviour either in Delphi or in Windows some time ago. -- IIRC in past, it used to be the case that one would would actually still get the occasional Application.OnIdle() call in your Delphi app even when nothing else much was going on on the system, even when you set Done to True. And as I recall, this changed at some point due to either a change in Windows or Delphi (can't remember which) several years ago and one had to be a bit more circumspect about setting Done to False if you didn't want your App to go to sleep entirely. In any case, it clearly was/is an issue on my PC tonight with the current (as of this writing) DUnit code, so I had to patch around it.
I did this in arguably a rather kludgy way, e.g. by manhandling things via providing an OnIdle handler while running GUI automation tests to signal that that the app is not in fact done (e.g. "don't block, don't go to sleep") and then reinstating any prior handler immediately after. There is no doubt a more elegant solution to this, perhaps by posting a message to ourselves to keep the app "alive", but my first attempt or 2 at something better didn't work out and I'm not interested enough to pursue this further. I'd be interested to hear of a better fix though.
I've supplied patches, but got no feedback from the DUnit2 team on SourceForge. So I forked DUnit2 with the full commit history into my Github account. I've applied many fixes there, including the compilation issues with XE & XE3+ and the scriptable self-tests that pause if no mouse action occurs. I'll continue my development of DUnit2 on my Github account [https://github.com/graemeg/dunit2].
This is occurring on 2 machines that are both running Windows XP Pro SP3, yet it runs OK on my development machine within in or outside the Delphi IDE.
Running Windows XP Pro. Exe compiled under Delphi 2010.
When I run the exe I get the Windows Reporting error "Neopos.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience"
I know it is happening somewhere in the form create of the main form.
Application.Initialize; //Runs this
Application.CreateForm(TfmMain, fmMain); //FAILS HERE
It does not get to: procedure TfmMain.FormCreate(Sender: TObject); in the Main Form and I don't know how to track down this error and debug it.
What happens between: Application.CreateForm(TfmUDF, fmUDF); AND procedure TfmMain.FormCreate(Sender: TObject) in my main form.
How can I trace this to find out what the hell is causing the Windows Error.
Of course the Windows Error report contains a long listing of information. Where can I look in that to find the cause or at least a clue on the cause of the error.
This error has now stopped all development work (and ruined my weekend) so I urgently need to fix this.
The most straightforward route to take would be to include a product like MadExcept or JCL Debugger into your application, to get a full call stack (including line number) of the point of failure. We've rolled our own years ago, and it has been a tremendous help in situations like this.
One alternative, but lots more cumbersome, would be to generate a MAP file from your project, use MAP2DBG to generate a .MAP file, and use the Windows Debbuging Tools to get about the same information. This approach is a lot more hardcore, and only advisable if you really want to learn a lot about the internals of windows debugging (and enjoy working with arcane tools).
Another alternative would be to attach to the failing application from your development environment using Remote Debugging. Only applicable if you have a fair amount of control over the failing machines.
#user576639, here are some debugging ideas:
Look into the System's Event Viewer
If you got the exe has encountered a problem and needs to close chances are you'll find something about it in the System's Event Viewer. That should be your first step.
Any special DLL's required?
Do you need MIDAS.DLL?
Are you using an database engine? Does it require some sort of client library?
I'm talking from experience here: My development machine obviously has all the libraries I might need. Most of my clients also have most of those libraries because they have my software installed. At times I put out small helping applications that don't go throw extensive testing and they fail to work on SOME machines but work fine on other machines. Why? I used TClientDataset and forgot to include MIDAS.DLL with the application; Or the application is trying to access a Firebird SQL server but the user doesn't have Firebird client library installed.
Printer driver issues
Boy I hate Delphi's printer handling. Also hate buggy printer drivers, haven't made up my mind about what's worst. If you have something on your main form that might be requesting information about the default Windows printer (example: an REPORT) give this a try: Install an sane/simple printer and set it as the default printer. If the user has Office 2007+ installed, set the "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" the default printer.
I have seen bad printer driver + delphi issues manifest themselves with the "exe needs to close" symptom.
Prepare an special build of your application
If you got this far without fixing your issue it's time to create an special build of your application that's capable of providing more information. First of all I'd try adding this to your DPR file; Don't know if this is still useful for Delphi 2010 but it did help me see some early exceptions with a Delphi 7 application:
function HandleUnhandledException:integer;stdcall;
begin
Result := 1; // 1 = EXCEPTION_EXECUTE_HANDLER
end;
// and then immediately after "begin" in your DPR file:
begin
SetUnhandledExceptionFilter(#HandleUnhandledException);
// ... the usual stuff goes here
end;
Add some ShowMessage-s to your Main Form's code, in your OnCreate handler (if you have one), in your Create constructor (again, if you have one). If you're adding an ShowMessage to your Create destructor, make sure it's after the "inherited" call. This will help pin-point how far the loading of the form goes before it fails.
If all else fails...
Create a new, blank form; Make it the new Main Form (so it's initialized before your former Main Form). Test it on the client's machine - does it show up? It most likely will, if it doesn't you've got some serious problems.
Start copying the components from the former main form to the new main form; Only the components need to be copied, not the code: Your error is probably caused by some component failing to initialize properly. Make sure no component has "Active=True"! Copy the components in small batches, test often. If you spot the component that causes your form not to load on the client's computer, tell us about it and we'll try to help.
If you manage to get all your components on the new form, write an OnCreate handler that sets Active := True for all the components that need that. Did that fix the issue?
If you got this far then all the components you used on your main form can load properly. The problem's related to YOUR CODE. Start copying all the code from your old main form to your new main form, in small bits, and test. You're bound to find the peace of code that causes your application to stop loading.
Use dependency walker to see if you're missing a required DLL.
You can use information from system reporting (your error and suggestion to send it ) with Error Report Grabber ( http://www.maxerist.net/main/soft-for-win/err-rep-grabber ). I developed this tool when I desperately needed to track a error that appeared very rarely so almost non-reproducible. It helped me to track the information from stack to find actual place in the code.
The tool works only on XP (MS removed this dialog in Win7 and probably Vista), but I see that your cases are XP so this can help.
UPDATE: if you're not familiar with assembler and everything, this can work like this.
You should compile you program and don't change anything. Save the report on a bad machine, copy the file to your developer machine and open to view the contents. Look at the stack of your main thread in the report and find numbers more than $00400000, they're usually the addresses inside the procedures that called some other procedure and wait for return. In your developer machine, start the program and stop at any line, open CPU Window and on the main list with assembler instruction right-click and choose go to address, enter this address. You will see other assembler lines, but wrapped with pascal constructions you can probably recognize as yours
Thanks a lot for the help.
In the end I reverted to a recent backup and traced it down to a particular form.
I did not actually find the error, which is a bit worrying, but in any case I am back up and running (phew!!)
I made the error to occur on my development machine also, when, and only when, I use my install program (Inno Setup) to compile a setup.exe and which installs the exe as well as installing postgreSQL. Seems really strange, as though there is a problem with the setup compiler. In any case I have not seen the error again. I guess it will remains a mystery, like women.
In Delphi withing debugging options select debug dcu's, this will allow you to debug into the Delphi source code for TForm and its descendants and you may be able to track down a more likely culprit.
Set a breakpoint on
Application.CreateForm(TfmMain, fmMain); //FAILS HERE
and then step into the code to see where the issue is.
We are trying to split up our monolithic EXE into a combination of an EXE and several packages. So far, we have one package that we're trying to use, and when running the EXE Codeguard shows the following error on startup:
CG Error
Two different CRTLDLLs are loaded. CG might report false errors
(C:\Windows\system32\CC32100MT.DLL)
(D:\Projects\Foo\Bar.bpl)
OK
I read this as two different runtime libraries being loaded - one, the correct one (CC32100MT.dll), one incorrect, which is the package we're trying to use.
Continuing to run the program shows odd errors, especially casting between classes or passing a pointer to a class as a parameter in a method that crosses the EXE/DLL boundary. Codeguard itself doesn't show any other errors at all though. Edit: This is now resolved, and wasn't related. The program appears to run correctly, but the warning Codeguard shows is still worrying.
How do we solve this?
Some more details
We've looked at as many things as we (the developer working on this and I) can collectively think of:
Each project is built using runtime packages. The EXE host lists Bar in its package list.
Each project is set to compile with dynamic RTL. However, changing this does not solve the problem.
The package is linked to the EXE via its BPI file, but linking via a LIB makes no difference either.
The EXE and BPL are compiled with the same project settings, where the same options exist for both types of project. We think, anyway :)
There is only one copy of the BPL and BPI on the system: it's definitely linking to the right one.
Examining the EXE and BPL with Depends and TDump show they are both using C:\Windows\system32\CC32100MT.DLL. They should both be using the one RTL.
Creating a new project (a plain VCL forms application) and linking to the BPL (via its BPI) works fine. Something in the process of adding all the files and LIBs that make our EXE contain the code it needs to changes this, but we haven't been able to figure out what.
The LIBs all either correspond to DLLs we use (flat C interface, usually look as though they were built with MSVC) or are simple projects with lots of related files, compiled to a lib for the purpose of linking into the EXE - these correspond roughly to the areas of the program we want to split to BPLs, by the way. There don't seem to be project options for the LIB projects that would affect RTL linking, unless we've missed them.
I have exhaustively hunted through Depends and looked at all RTL and CC32*.dll files the EXE and every single DLL references. All are identical: rtl140.bpl and CC32100MT.DLL. Fully qualified paths show they are the same files, too. Everything should be using the one same run-time library.
Edit: The final EXE is complex, built with several libs, several DLLs, etc. All these, when built with C++Builder, are built with the current version. Is it possible there's something in one of these DLLs or LIBs that could cause a problem? I don't know enough about how the RTL is linked in to be sure about where to look... my (naive?) assumption is that the linker would normally link in one set of RTL functions, but that of course doesn't seem to be happening... and I don't know how things change when using packages. Is it possible this error has always existed and Codeguard has not flagged it before, because we haven't used something dynamic like a package?
Perhaps another question is, Why would a package have its own RTL anyway, or what would make it count as 'a RTL DLL' to Codeguard?
We're stumped. Absolutely stumped. We've had other problems using BPLs (they seem to be surprisingly tricky things, especially using C++) but have managed to solve them all. This one we've had no luck at all and we'd really appreciate any insights :)
We're using C++Builder 2010 (as part of RAD Studio actually, but with little Delphi code apart from components.)
Edit: Started a bounty. I'd really like to solve this!
Edit 2: Thanks to David Dean for his help (marked as answered below.) Via email, he pointed out this issue was reproduced in a simple test case by someone else, and is logged in Embarcadero QC as report 86335. Currently there is no fix, but the warning does not appear to indicate a genuine problem (ie, it's probably a spurious error, and while it's a pity to have to click past the dialog when you run, hopefully there's nothing in the error to worry about.)
Since one of these is coming from a .bpl, did you try turning off "Build with runtime packages" in the project options?
We had a similar problem. We tracked it down to a (non VCL) .cbproj that was created without the "Multithreaded" option.
As far as I can tell, the only time you get chance to set this option is when you create a new .cbproj, it cannot be changed afterwards using the GUI. We ended up "hacking" the .cbproj to include the following:
<Multithreaded>true</Multithreaded>
To determine which dll is causing the issue, it should be the last dll loaded in the output window just before you see the CG message.
Did you check if you use _TCHAR as char. We had some similar problems with RAD Studio and we found a workaround using _TCHAR as char. As soon as one DLL or BPL Project is compiled with wchar_t, this code guard error appears.
We also figured out, that EXE projects can be compiled with TCHAR = wchar_t without any problem (the main function will be WIDE).
The settings does not affect the GUI being able to handle UNICODE.
A customer logged a similar case in our public bug tracking system and the bug has been identified and fixed in the latest release.
I've created an auto-updating application which is distributed to 100s of users.
The auto-update utility is being flagged by 55% of antiviruses on virustotal ( link ).
My application was created in Delphi 7. Most of the flags are saying that this is Generic trojan/malware, obviously the software isn't actually malware (I'm the only one with source code access and access to the server which hosts it) but it's causing a lot of users to be
Does anyone have any idea how I can stop this being wrongly flagged?
If, as you stated, empty form applications get rated as virus, you might very well be infected by the Delphi virus. More info about this... thing:
http://www.delphipraxis.net/topic163041_virus+infects+delphi.html
http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=208187826
Virus in Delphi 7
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1717-delphi-developer-virus-exposes-weakness-in-anti-virus-defences.html
In addition, you use Delphi 7, which is a target for this virus (as far as I know not all Delphi versions are).
Delphi 2007: New VCL Application
Compile without changing anything and some antivirus packages will report the resulting EXE as a potential virus/trojan. Change the name of the main form or add a second form to the project etc and antivirus warnings disappear. Undo the changes and they come back (so it's not a D2007 port of the "Delphi Upgrade Incentive Virus").
My guess is that someone, somewhere once upon a time wrote a virus/trojan/malware with Delphi and the signature/heuristics associated with that now sometimes unfortunately collides with other Delphi apps.
I think you have two choices:
a) Submit your auto-update program as a false positive to all those companies, (and do so for any new versions that are detected). Make it easier for them by ensuring your meta-data is correct and signing perhaps.
b) Split up the functionality so you don't have a single Delphi program that downloads files from the internet, overwrites files and patches files.
It depends - if the 100s of users are on a corporate network, using the same enterprise antivirus software administered by group policy, one solution could be to specify your software as an exception in your antivirus package.
I would try to refactor the program, changing names, changing the order of the procedures and methods, some program structures, removing, replacing, and adding code.
Submit each change to VirusTotal.
You might eventually detect what is causing the problem.
If your program "modifies" an executable, it will be picked up by a lot of AV programs.
I've even seen Borland's patch program that was distributed with Delphi 7 flagged as a generic virus when installed fresh off the CD.
I'm not sure there is much you can do about it, unless you can turn that "feature" off in the AV program or have the rights to add an exception for it. Personally, I think it's just a lazy "catch-all" created by the AV software writers.
AV software also check the Import Table for common API used in viruses, though I don't see any API that will trigger the AV software in the scan report.
See my post at anyone having problems with delphi 2010 and norton internet security. Lately I have been getting SONAR errors too with Delphi 7 compiled programs (and by programs compiled with other compilers).
I reported this to Norton, look also at hot issues at Norton board.
Of course this is only Norton, you don't specify which virus checkers you encountered.
We got the same problem here...
Ant-virus detect some behaviors of our software too.
The ant-virus company doesn't say exactly what they watch (sure, security issue).
Here for example I got this problem when I started using pipelines.
What we did ? We call the security companies, they analysed our .exe, and now we have "white flag" on them.
...No, it isn't so fast process.