I'm using delphi6, and it lacks the following abilities:
a library object,
a list object(looks like TList,TStringList is good enough?)
a algorithm library(like sort,)
template library like STL
dynamic language feature or GC.
and so on.
how can I find this things?
Try Jedi Code Library. There are good replacements for container classes and sorting algorithms. I don't think there is GC or STL-like library for Delphi 6.
Delphi 6 is behind the times, check Delphi 2009 or at least Turbo Delphi
There is DeCAL, which claims to be similar to the STL. I've never really tested it, however.
There are many third party delphi libraries, components and source code examples on the net.
Just a couple off the top of my head
JEDI http://www.delphi-jedi.org/
and
a Delphi super page http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/
As an alternative to DeCAL (Which is a very good alternative to TList without generics), I will propose EZSDL by Julian M Bucknall.
List of main third party components compatible with Delphi 2007 for Win32 and RAD Studio 2007 by Andreano Lanusse at http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/37455
The first three are in the VCL, take a look in the help and the sources. Delphi 6 has no generics, so cannot be used with a template library. And no garbage collection.
If you want to program in Delphi, forget about them. If not, find another language.
Related
I am working on a C++/Win32 project, and I have some Delphi code from some other (not mine) project that is relevant, and I want to convert it to C++ and integrate into my project.
Keep in mind I have no experience with Delphi.
What's a good and user-friendly Delphi complier? I don't mind about command line or GUI, as long as it's clear to use.
The only Delphi compiler is the Delphi compiler. It's not free. There is the Free Pascal Compiler, FPC. That is, as its name suggests, free. FPC can compile most Delphi code but be aware that many Delphi libraries, e.g. the VCL, are not available for FPC.
I do not know whether this would be too painful for you you to convert the source code in C++ manually.
But have you tried Lazarus? It is intended to be an open source equivalent of Delphi.
Hope it helped.
The previous responses here were all valid in 2012, but things have changed.
Nowadays there is a free (as in beer) Community Edition:
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download
I was wanting to learn OpenGL using Delphi But never added an library to Delphi or even sure if this is what you need to do? Anyone give some steps on how i would add openGL to delphi so i could call it in the uses section?
You need a wrapper for the OpenGL dlls that declare the types and functions needed, and then you call those functions from your Delphi code. The VCL includes a somewhat limited (and generic) wrapper in OpenGL.pas, but there are better ones available.
One of the popular wrappers for Delphi is the Open Source GLScene, which includes demos and wrapper units. It also includes visual components that you drop on your form just like any other Delphi components. The link above is for the SourceForge project; the GLScene web site has more information, including documentation and FAQs.
in C# you can easily open an assembly (just another word from an EXE) and then get reflection information from that assembly. I've been looking for something similar for Delphi where I can write a Delphi program that can point to a Delphi EXE then get me reflection information. How can I archive this? Thanks
There are a handful of programs that can extract RTTI from Delphi programs and DLLs. It's not as rich as what's available for .NET, but it can be done to a limited degree. There's a lot more RTTI available in Delphi 2010 and later versions, but as far as I know there's no program out yet that can extract info from them.
I was at the conference where this system was formally announced, and a bunch of people asked how this would affect security. Barry Kelly, who created the new RTTI, said that there would not be enough metadata available to create a "Delphi Reflector".
Well, sad news is, you probably can't. You can easily view .NET assemblies because they a) are compiled to what is called intermediate language (thus you can even get the code back using the likes of Reflector etc.), and b) contain metadata. Delphi, on the other hand, compiles to native code that and produces regular PE files that do not include rich metadata like a .NET assembly.
Delphi just doesn't work that way.
There are tools that can assist in reversing (Delphi written) executables but it will never be easy and it requires good x86 assembly knowledge.
Some examples of such tools are:
IDA Pro and/or Hex Rays
DeDe
Interactive Delphi Reconstructor
PE Explorer
The resource sections of a Delphi Executable also reveals usefull info like the form and it's components.
See also Is there a program to decompile Delphi?
If you have Delphi2010+ you can load a bpl and then use the rich rtti over it lik. e you do with c# and a .net assembly. If you need to do this in a .exe AFAIK you can't.
TestComplete seems to identify most objects in a running Delphi executable. You can extract this information with a script. A demo can be downloaded from http://www.automatedqa.com/downloads/testcomplete
This is maybe not the type of application you want as it is big and made for GUI-testing, but yes it can identify the objects.
As mentioned Remko, IDR (Interactive Delphi Reconstructor) can extract all RTTI information (if program contains it!) for Delphi version from 2 to 2009. Version 2010 will be available later. Moreover IDR can use all information that it finds in program to create a lot of comments to disassemled program code (this is a first step of analyses). You can also look forms and easy go to event hadlers associated with controls.
I have a few Delphi 6 third party components which I need to add to Delphi 2010 to begin my migration. Is it possible? The interface seem a lot different and I can't seem to find a way to do this?
This help...
My components: DBGridEasy, TSerial, Varian Async32.
Thanks a lot.
As has been mentioned this is not straightforward. But you do have options.
Check with Vendor and get update
if you have source you can try to update yourself.
I don't agree that it is neccesarily too complicated to upgrade. Delphi 2009 did add (finally - about a decade after it should have) very good Unicode support into the heart of delphi, but this was done down to the level of almost every built in function.
We upgraded a large (700,000 lines) project in only a couple of days. There is info on the net on what to do, there are a number of functions you need to replace if you use them (such as any funcion with Ansi in the title). Its worth a try at least.
If you dont have the source I'm afraid you have no choice but to contact the vendor, there is nothing you can do since the binary format for each Delphi version is differnt.
I don't know for sure about those particular components, but it probably won't work even if you have the source for them because there were many changes between those versions, such as the string type changing. You would be better off finding out if the vendor has updated them.
The biggest change between Delphi 6 and Delphi 2010 is the changing of the default strings to Unicode in Delphi 2009.
I highly recommend against using any pre-Delphi 2009 component with your upgrade. They will not know about Unicode and you will run into problems.
First, you should see if the new version of Delphi already has the functionality you want built in. Many things have been upgraded over the years. You may find you don't need some of your old components at all.
For the ones you still need, try to find an upgrade, or some other similar component that is ready for Delphi 2009. There are many grids around. I am not familiar with Serial or Async programs to recommend one.
This might already help you: Varian Async was acquired by TMS, the same component is now known as TMS Async32
I have source code for a Windows DLL that is written in C++ and uses Visual Component Library. Now my task is to port that to Linux, but I don't have source code for the VCL itself, or any kind of documentation (and I have never worked with Borland C++; in my Windows days I used MFC).
This should not be all that hard, since my DLL does not have any GUI: as far as I can see, it mostly uses VCL for multithreading. I ran into a class that inherits from TThread and that is where I got stuck. I did some search on the Internet, but found no documentation for VCL so far. I would like to avoid buying a book on Borland C++ Builder, because I don't have time to wait for it to arrive from the Amazon. I cannot consider buying the package for Windows, because at work I only have a Linux box.
Any suggestions?
The Boost libraries, and wxWidgets, will provide analogs to the VCL classes.
You should be aware that the VCL used by C++ Builder is written entirely in Delphi/ObjectPascal. c++ builder apps all involve c++ making use of delphi-based libraries.
The FreePascal/Lazarus open source project has reverse-engineered most of the VCL (almost all of the non-visual stuff and much of the visual stuff) and it runs natively on Linux. The non-visual VCL-compatible stuff is known as the "Free Component Library" ("FCL")
http://www.freepascal.org/
http://www.freepascal.org/fcl/fcl.var
The source of the TThread implementation in the FCL should be easy enough to find.
One option would be to rewrite in FreePascal, where language would change to ObjectPascal but calls to the VCL and usage of VCL components would be virtually identical.
Another option might be to port to c++ on Linux and somehow make use of FreePascal's VCL from c++. I'm not sure of the practicality/feasibility of that. Someone at FreePascal's forums should be able to help answer that.
So another option as someone has mentioned would just be to rewrite using some other threading library.
The VCL is documented on CodeGear's web site. TThread in particular is described here.
I've found the documentation on the threading-related components of the VCL to be rather sparse. This site has a much better description of the Delphi/VCL approach to threading.
You can download their free compiler and try experimenting with it. It should be possible to run it under WINE at least. Maybe even under FreeDOS.
It should be related to the TThread class in Delphi/Kylix. That is another alternative for exploring it. I do believe that the most important methods were run() and sync() but it's been ages since I used it.
However, if you plan to cleanly port the code to Linux, it may help to re-implement the TThread class yourself, using some boost libraries or something.
Many years ago, Borland released a version of their IDE for linux, marketed as Kylix. I'm not sure if it is still supported, but that might be the path of least resistance, for you.
There are several libraries that provide frameworks like threading e.g. Boost (www.boost.org) or ACE (http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html)
It should be fairly easy to port the code to use one of these threading infrastructures.