PNW Delphi Users Group - Coding in the Northwest

The following article is a simple insight to CodeGear's upcomping Delphi 2007 for Win32 coming out late March, 2007.  I have been given specific permission from CodeGear to post the following of this new IDE product upgrade.

Introduction

Well...  Microsoft Windows Vista is here, like it or not.  As developers for the Windows Win32 platform, you pretty much don't have a choice supporting it, unless your product is specialized and do not need a client base that uses Microsoft Windows Vista.

CodeGear, the new company formed as the IDE tools arm of Borland, has had to also follow suit in order to support products built with Delphi as well as being able to install their IDE on Windows Vista.

I'll first preface my own use.  My customers range from WinNT through Vista.  I do very little .NET work.  The majority of my development is done under Windows XP as a VMWare virtual machine environment.  I do also have been doing some work on a Vista Ultimate non-virtualized machine.

Borland Development Suite 2006, the current product, is a suite that incorporates Delphi for Win32, Delphi for .Net, C# Builder for .NET and C++ Builder. This created great value as customers upgrading from Delphi 7 or earlier would get additional development platforms. Delphi 2007 for Win32, or codename "Spacely", directly addresses a very popular concern among Delphi developers to address only the one personality that is a majority of concern and that is the Win32 platform.  Face it.  It's not dying anytime soon. And with Vista out and a lot of legacy Win32 applications, moving stuff to .NET is not going to happen for a lot of folks.  CodeGear took a poll and listened to their customers.  Focus on what’s needed.

The Borland Development Suite is not discontinued, by the way.  CodeGear's next major upgrade will be to the entire suite and is codenamed "Highlander".

Installation

CodeGear recently announced the change in their installer technology to using InstallAware. This installer is actually built from Delphi and creates MSI based installers.  Delphi 2007 is the first product from CodeGear to be distributed this way.  CodeGear has also listened well to its customers and moved their distribution to either DVD (not the 3-4 CD's) or electronic software distribution.  With the later, the installer will be able to have a smaller payload and download and install appropriate prerequisites as needed.

Installation of Delphi 2007 went very smooth in both the XP VM and pure Vista environments.

Because of the "man in black" that is well "loved" in Vista, CodeGear has done some restructuring of directory locations. It makes good sense to do this, but it may require you to briefly get yourself acquainted to the new directories.

Compatibility

Delphi 2007 for Win32 is designed to be a non-breaking release.  What does this mean?  If you only have DCU's (and no source code) for Delphi 2006 for Win32 components and want to install them into Delphi 2007 for Win32, then you shouldn't have any problems.  If you are a component writer, you should, by now, be using  the VCL and RTL versioning compiler flag checking, opposed to the {IfDEF Version 180} for example.

Delphi 2007 will set, in case you are using Version 180 for Delphi 2006, version defines to VER180 AND VER185. If you need to specifically indicate Delphi 2007, then check for VER185.

With the thirty some odd component packages with and without source code, I didn't have any compatibility issues.  I was able to install my packages and built my apps with ease.

Highlander is expected to be a "breaking" style release, in the sense that version will most likely be 190 and the chances of major VCL changes will be high, as they have done in the past major versions of Delphi. 

You may have been hearing or seeing blurbs about supporting generics in Delphi. Support for generics has been indicated to be included to be in Highlander, which will help insure non-breaking issues in Delphi 2007.