How to use AQtime (free) in Delphi XE? - delphi

Embarcadero says that I got some free version of AQtime when I purchased my Delphi XE license. However, today I tried to run for the first time AQtime and I got an error message: 'You are using AQTime Standard... Line-level profiling can be performed in AQTime Pro only' and then it says to upgrade to Pro.
I see only an 'Abort' and a 'Help' button. When I click the Help button is says "This program cannot display the webpage". Once I press the 'Abort' button... well... you can imagine what happens :)
I would have upgraded without bothering to ask this question if the upgrade would have been below 70-80 dollars. But when I looked one AQTime web site I have seen that it is almost as expensive as my Delphi license!
So, there is any free version of AQTime included in Delphi? If yes, what am I doing wrong? How do I make it work? If not, there is a way to remove the AQTime plugin from IDE? I could at least make the IDE load faster this way.

That's right - the Standard edition of AQtime has some features missing. In your case, the missing feature you are trying to use is the line-level profiling - the thing that shows you links to specific code lines in the profiling results. The Standard edition can profile only on the Routine level - you will see routine names in the results and the call stacks (where appropriate), but without line numbers. You can lear more about the differences here:
http://smartbear.com/products/development-tools/performance-profiling/standard-for-rad-studio-vs-pro/
So, to actually use AQtime Standard, open the Setup page and configure the profiling areas to be Routine-level. You can read more about this here:
http://smartbear.com/support/viewarticle/17718/
http://smartbear.com/support/viewarticle/17895/
The docs are for the standalone Pro version of AQtime (not integrated to the IDE), but the UI and the functionality is very similar, so you should be able to sort things out.

Related

DelphiXE7: Where''s the WinAPI help topics?

Hello I just finally buy the newest Delphi after many years using older version or free pascal. Everything seem to work as expected except when I look the help I can't find winapi or opengl topics like i could in old version.
Do I need to install something special so I can press f1 over for example "messagebox" or "sleep" or "glcolor" or whatever because I install delphi xe7 3 times now but there is only "Install Help" option during install and no other help option I can see.
A while ago I had tried to fix this annoying change from how it was to limited success. What I had done was:
- install the documentation part of "Windows 7 SDK with .net 3.5" (won't work with any later SDK installs since they changed help format)
- install a program from helpware called FAR
- in program FAR, choose H2 UTILS, then select "embarcadero.rs_xe7", then click register
- go to plugins and add WIN7SDKCOM
That was it, with that done both the table of contents and index of delphi help contained the whole windows 7 documentation. HOWEVER! There was a problem, and it was that many (most?) winapi F1 context sensitive help didn't work, it still took me to the standard delphi help page that said to go to MSDN even though if i went to the index i would immediately find the topic.
So, imperfect answer that I'm relaying from memory since I reinstalled that computer and didn't add the win7sdk this time. Hopefully it helps, I know I was happy to have easier offline access to the documentation. Maybe someone can figure out the extra step to make F1 help also work completely.

Toolbar 2000 under Delphi XE?

Does the old Toolbar 2000 package (preferably with the TBX extension) compile and work under Delphi XE?
Are anyone using "Tb2k" and TBX these days?
Do TB2K and TBX compile?
Toolbar2000 does. It is used as part of SpTBX (see below.) TBX I'm afraid I don't know - development ceased a few years ago and I upgraded to SpTBX. I would recommend you do the same - it's actively developed / maintained and you probably won't end up asking questions like this about it in a couple of years (hopefully!)
(I know 'upgrade' wasn't what you asked, sorry. It's what I would recommend. I don't like the situation where I'm using third-party code which is no longer maintained, and I have to take that task upon myself and upgrade it each version.)
Is anyone using TBX?
Most people these days do not use TBX - development on it has ceased. Instead, they use SpTBX, developed by Silverpoint Development. It used to be a patch to TBX (so you'd have three layers: TB2K followed by TBX followed by SpTBX) but these days is directly based on TB2K, so it's only two layers.
The installation instructions are easy to follow, and its installer installs TB2K as well.
SpTBX provides extra controls on top of those provided by TB2K, and also provides skin support. It comes with a skin editor if you want to create your own skins. Many of the ones its shipped with I would never use in commercial software, but the Office 2003- and Office 2007-style skins are excellent.
One of the demo SpTBX applications with the Office 2007 Blue skin
Upgrading from TBX: Most TBX components have direct analogues in the SpTBX library, and renaming them in the DFM and form file and opening the form will be a good start. (Or use GExperts.) Some properties and events have changed or gone, which is annoying. I found I could generally figure out how to achieve the same thing pretty easily - it took a day or so to upgrade a large application for me - but you will find it's not a direct smooth transition.
You can download the 2.2.2 sources and modify them by opening the Delphi 2009 package (tb2k_d11.dpk and tb2kdsgn_d11.dpk) files and saving them as a new name, which creates a new copy. Change the NAME SUFFIX from _d11 to _d15, to follow the existing convention, which is useful although a dated technique. For our purposes d15 in this case means a delphi XE package (delphi version 15.0).
Or you can download my copy, which I did this to already (tb2k22_xe.zip). Just open up the project groups, and install the packages. Note that it seems this code is dual licensed, and to "redistribute" such a trivially modified copy of this code, my changes must be licensed under the GPL, and so, to avoid GPL contamination you should email Jordan Russell and ask for permission to relicense these changes/updates under his Toolbar2000 commercial license, if you wish to use them in a closed source commercial license. Or you can repeat the steps I followed, and avoid GPL contamination. Better still, give Jordan Russell $30 and become a paying customer, and prove that the good-old days are not completely gone, when a guy who wrote a nice component for delphi, got people handing him money, left right and center.
I realize this is an old question.
I am still using TB2K in delphi 5 apps. I've also used TBX in combination.
Some people refuse to use newer delphi versions simply because the old delphi products were almost just as good (not quite but still) since they have an infinitely expandable component system.
Doesn't SpTBXLib and TBX violate the Toolbar 2000 licenses considering that it modifies the TB2K without the permission of Jordan Russell? Or did these products get permision from Jordan Russell to release modifications and patches? This all seems to be jumping through a bunch of annoying hoops that a BSD/MIT style license would solve. Even if SpTBXLib and TBX are violating Russell's terms, he's probably okay with it if someone emails him, but I'm not 100 percent certain - it's a bad assumption to make. These projects should clearly say in their README or on their Github site that they have gotten the permission.
Also, I was one of those people who paid Jordan Russell ... to bring back the good old days of delphi developers paying other developers for their work (instead of GPL cult nonsense where programmers go home starving). The trick would be somehow for Russell to offer it BSD while getting paid still, which might prove difficult. It seems the GPL is actually a way for developers to restrict their software, not to free it up.. what a joke.
Free software foundation = Restrictive Software Foundation
One option would be to make it BSD/MIT and ask for donations, but I doubt Jordan Russell would go for it. Might be worth a try. Or if he is only making a few bucks from this every year, then it would be no big deal to just release it BSD. I'm not sure how many copies he sells per year. It's none of our business - but it sort of is in the sense that we are willing to make improvements to his code and not charge money, so we are part of the source too! May the source be with you.
You can check this
I think XE is very similar to D2010
You should check spTBX at http://www.silverpointdevelopment.com
It builds on tb2k without dependancies, installer is there and it works on unicode delphi.

Delphi: Free TSynEdit replacement

What's the best free replacement for TSynEdit? As I can see, it is developed very slow. Want to find some replacement for it. Or, may be, the version from another maintainer.
Need Delphi 2010 compatibility.
SynEdit works fine under D2010. There's one notable bug involving the Enter key not working under certain conditions. A patch for it can be found about halfway down the page on this thread. Search for // GB: BUG FIXED
Aside from that, it should work. Are you having some specific issues with it?
You can try out Scintilla. As of version 2.x it supports "virtual space" (most important feature for me - after syntax highlighting) and has more features like CodeFolding, Annotations http://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#Annotations, MultipleSelections, and many more.
AFAIK there is no wrapper for Delphi that is up-to-date and works with Unicode/D2009+.
I've created a project at http://code.google.com/p/dscintilla/ which should be in 'beta stage' in a week (or so).
I have never used SynEdit myself, but have always believed it to be the best free open-source advanced editor component for Delphi. Because it is open-source, you can yourself alter it to suit your needs.

Delphi: Application error logging in the field

Using Delphi 7, I wonder if there is a free component which will collect diagnostic information as my application runs at a remote site and will help me to debug error reports.
Maybe it records each menu item selected, control clicked, text input, etc? Maybe it just dumps the stack on a crash. Maybe it does something else ...
I don't mind adding code (e.g at the start and end of each procedure), as that might generate more useful info than a fully automatic system.
I am not sure if the solution ought to "phone home" or if it is enough to produce a text file which can be emailed to me.
Any suggestions?
with the crash debuging have a look at MadExcept
http://www.madshi.net/madExceptDescription.htm
madExcept was built to help you locating crashes in your software. Whenever there's a crash/exception in your program, madExcept will automatically catch it, analyze it, collect lots of useful information, and give the end user the possibility to send you a full bug report.
free for non-commercial usage, inexpensive for commercial usage
or JclDebug from the JEDI Code Library
http://www.delphi-jedi.org/
A Blog Posting about it can be found here
http://www.gnegg.ch/2002/12/jcldebug/
EDIT: This seems to be a very good example on how to use JCLDebug
http://robstechcorner.blogspot.com/2009/04/finding-hard-to-reproduce-errors.html
I use EurekaLog http://www.eurekalog.com
It does the call stack, memory contents, other apps running, a good description of the machine, OS, patches, etc.., It can (with user permission, and if configured to to so) take a screenshot, ask the user for input (what were you doing when it crashed?), etc.. It can send the dump via e-mail, post to http, post directly to bug trackers like Mantis and FogBugz, or just leave it on the system. It's great, and well supported.
Also, here's a link to a similar question
Compare Delphi Exception Handlers
Have you looked at the open-source JclDebug from Project Jedi? Here's a nice succinct write-up on JclDebug.
Imagine you could get a detailed
error-report containing a full
callstack of where the error occured
combined with information about file
and line-number. This report could be
generated directly on the users
computer and be sent to you via email
or directly via the internet, using a
custom procedure - even directly
creating entries in the
bugtracking-tool you are using.
This and more is made possible by the
Project JEDI - more accuratly, the
JCL-Subproject with its
JclDebug-Framework. When you have
completed the installation of the
package, a new Menu Option called
"Inser JCL Debug Data" will be added
to the Project-Menu of your
Delphi-IDE.
There is a great delphi porting of the most known opensource logging framework written in java, Log4J: it is called Log4Delphi.
http://log4delphi.sourceforge.net
I downloaded it, extended and used with my projects with success.
Best features: opensource, Apache license, very well documented, simple to extend it, power design: with the concept of appender, you could build up your custom appender and use it to send logging data from remote customer computer to your head quarter using UDP protocol.
Try it, and let me know :-)
PS: the project seems to be discontinued, but it is mature and I'd used it without memory overload and cpu overhead problems.
The log4Delphi project has been dormant for 4 years but I have been granted access to update the dormant Log4Delphi project and I have rolled up 4 years of bugfixes and patches into the latest 0.8 release available on Source-forge. I use this library in production and have found it to very stable and reliable and easy to use.
Log4Delphi Downloads Page

Will the next release of Delphi be supporting cross-compilation for Mac and Linux?

According to a recent blog post by Allen Bauer:
As we’re working on Fulcrum, the next
RAD Studio release with a focus on
cross-compilation for Mac and Linux,
[..]
I figured someone would mention it in the comments, but I thought Mac/Linux support was a few releases further off. Maybe it's just me, but this is huge news.
Does this mean we will see Mac/Linux binaries created with a Delphi release this year?
While I cannot commit to any kind of time frame or release dates, we are working on Mac and Linux targeting. There is also some work going on for 64bit targeting as well, however that will most likely not be in the same time frame as the Mac/Linux targeted releases.
Fulcrum is the code name for the next release, so yes, the next release will include Mac and Linux support. I don't know about the time frame, but "this year" seems reasonable.
Native 64 bit support will be in a future release.
Personally, I prefer this order.
Embarcadero once said that "the release after the next one will support 64-bit". That was supposed to be Delphi 2010. That didn't happen of course - far from it. Not only did it not appear in the release that was indicated, but it now appears it won't be appearing for at least 2 further releases, and in the meantime, things that were NEVER even mentioned have suddenly appeared and been given priority.
So there really is no reason to believe that Fulcrum will happen either, until it has actually been delivered, no matter who talks about it, at least not in the time frame that is being indicated.
Embarcadero have proven less than reliable when it comes to their "roadmap" which is frankly something of a joke - the "current" one still talks about things that have already been delivered as if they have yet to happen, for instance.
FreePascal
I suppose it's not awful news...
If you look at the last road map, you will see Embarcadero is working on Project called "Delphi X"
(source: embarcadero.com)
and according to what Allen said, it seems it's will be compile to Mac OS & Linux at same time, which is great thing.
If Allen said so, it's pretty safe to assume it's true.
The best answer so far is by Michael Rozlog. It is an over hour interview with the Product Manager of RAD Studio and is worth hearing. It covers:
The Delphi Survey
Delphi application showcase
Updates to the Delphi Roadmap
12 Videos of Christmas (later renamed the 12 Holiday videos)
Compiler rewrite
Project Fulcrum: Delphi on Linux and Mac in Beta
Coming soon to more public beta (hopefully)
Delphi Backwards Compatibility
The upgrade cut off policy
Free or low cost versions of Delphi
And a whole lot more.
http://www.delphifeeds.com/go/f/65775?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+delphifeeds+(DelphiFeeds.com)

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