TurboPack and Suffix

Posted on 4. July 2015 by roman

During the last weeks a lot of guys had problems with the TurboPack libraries. The reason for the issue is the following:

  1. They downloaded the sources, opened the packages with XE8 and installed them. The packages then could be found under “C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\16.0\Bpl\”.
  2. They did the same with XE7 and the packages could be found under “C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\15.0\Bpl\”.
  3. But then if they restart the IDE there is  a problem. The the IDE looks for the packages and searches them in all directories the windows path variable points to. Since both paths (“C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\16.0\Bpl\” and “C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\15.0\Bpl\”) are in the path variable, the IDE finds the packages for XE7 and XE8. It simply depends on the order in the path variable which packages are loaded.
  4. Normally the XE8 path is the first in the path variable so that the XE8 IDE loads successfully the XE8 packages, whereas the XE7 IDE also tries to load the XE8 packages and then crashes.

That’s why I decided to add the XE8 suffix (“220”) to all libraries. For older Delphi versions and particularly newer versions I will create branches with the fitting suffix at GitHub.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on TurboPack and Suffix

Components for XE8 and GetIt

Posted on 9. April 2015 by roman

From my last post many of you already know that I’m maintaining some components for RAD Studio, particularly Delphi but also for C++Builder.

As I mentioned in that post Embarcadero sponsored me to this work and Embarcadero’s RAD Studio Product Manager Marco Cantù convinced me to clean up the code and only support the latest version of RAD Studio.

I did the work half a year ago for RAD Studio XE7 and with the brand new XE8 release we thought that we can do things better. That’s why we decided to the following:

  1. We renamed all components and put them under the new name TurboPack.
  2. We moved them all from Sourceforge to GitHub to a central place.
  3. For older versions of RAD Studio we created separate branches, e.g. TurboPack-XE3, TurboPack-XE5 and TurboPack-XE7.
  4. We added further components like SysTools, OnGuard and Essentials.
  5. For real FMX support we started to split a library into a VCL and FMX version, the VCL version became a branch of the FMX version.
  6. Embarcadero introduced the great GetIt package manager that automatically allows to install a library into the IDE.

The current libraries are:

  1. VirtualTreeView
  2. AsyncPro
  3. OnGuard VCL
  4. OnGuard FMX
  5. LockBox
  6. LockBox 3
  7. SysTools
  8. PowerPDF
  9. Orpheus
  10. SynEdit
  11. Abbrevia
  12. Essentials

For future work I can do the following:

  1. Adding further libraries
  2. Creating branches for older versions of RAD Studio
  3. Introducing FMX versions of Abbrevia or LockBox.

Any help or sponsoring would be appreciated.

Posted in C++-Builder, Delphi, FireMonkey, RAD Studio XE5, RAD Studio XE6, RAD Studio XE7, RAD Studio XE8, SourceForge, Third Party Components, Tips and Tricks, TurboPack, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Components for XE8 and GetIt

Components for RAD Studio XE7

Posted on 10. October 2014 by roman

As many of you already know I’m maintaining many components for RAD Studio, particularly Delphi. And with every new release of RAD Studio I have to adjust all of them.

In the past Embarcadero shipped a new release every year but during the last years they changed their habit and ship now every six months a new major release. And they have good reasons to do so which means we have to live with this fact.

The components are used in many applications so that it is impossible for many of you to move to the current version of RAD Studio without them.

In the past I maintained the components in the way that they are backward compatible. This approach has two disadvantages: On the one hand it is impossible to use new language features and on the other hand the effort to test all versions increases from release to release.

I also put my focus on Delphi only, normally there was no version for CBuilder.

This time Embarcadero’s RAD Studio Product Manager Marco Cantù asked me to change my strategy. He asked me only to support the latest version, therefore Delphi and CBuilder equally. I thought that this is a great idea and agreed.

This means that Embarcadero sponsors me to give you the best possible version of the components that support the latest version of Delphi and CBuilder and use the newest language features if necessary.

Basically the components are tested by Embarcadero but in case of issues I will keep on bug fixing.

Thanks to Embarcadero, particularly Marco, for this great step forward. Porting your application to the latest version of RAD Studio will now be easy.

All components will be a fork of their original, they will ship under the same license and they will be hosted under SourceForge.

Marco and I agreed to maintain in the first step the following components, maybe we will add further in the future:

1. Orpheus (Win32 and Win64)
2. Abbrevia (Win32, Win64, MacOSX, iOS and Android)
3. Virtual Tree (Win32 and Win64)
4. SynEdit (Win32 and Win64)
5. LockBox (Win32, Win64, MacOSX, iOS and Android)
6. Async Professional (Win32)
7. PowerPDF (Win32 and Win64)

Posted in C++-Builder, Delphi, RAD Studio XE5, RAD Studio XE6, RAD Studio XE7, SourceForge, Third Party Components, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Components for RAD Studio XE7

LockBox 3 and 2

Posted on 24. June 2014 by roman

I just updated the SourceForge project. Now LockBox 3 supports XE6 for Win32/Win64/iOS/Android and MaxOSX32. LockBox 2 supports XE6 Win32. For the Blowfish encryption there is a LockBox 2 version Win32/Win64/iOS/Android and MaxOSX32.

If you like this version then consider to click on the Donate button. 🙂

Posted in Delphi, RAD Studio XE6, SourceForge, Third Party Components, Tips and Tricks, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on LockBox 3 and 2

Donation

Posted on 22. June 2014 by roman

Hi folks,

during the last weeks I had to maintain lots of open source components for many platforms for Delphi and also C++. Usually I’m doing this tasks in my spare time but the amount of work has increased extremely. That’s why I added a Donation button to my blog and will be very happy about every click. 🙂

—
Thanks,

Roman

Posted in C++-Builder, Delphi, RAD Studio XE5, RAD Studio XE6, SourceForge, Third Party Components, Tips and Tricks, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Donation

LockBox 2

Posted on 12. June 2014 by roman

Some years ago the old TurboPower LockBox 2 component has been maintained in a way that it is not backward compatible. That’s why it got the new version number 3.

If you have old code that uses LockBox 2 and should be moved to XE6 you have a problem. LockBox 3 is completely different to LockBox 2. You have to change your code or you need a LockBox 2 version for XE6.

That’s what happened to me this week. And Now I have a XE6 compatible version of LockBox 2. If someone is interested then send me an email and I will publish it.

Posted in Delphi, RAD Studio XE6, SourceForge, Third Party Components, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on LockBox 2

Abbrevia and XE6

Posted on 12. June 2014 by roman

Since some guys asked me to add support for XE6 to Abbrevia I had a look at it. For Delphi XE6 there has already been support, for C++Builder I added it.You can find all necessary files in the SVN repo or you can download then directly from SourceForge.

Posted in C++-Builder, Delphi, RAD Studio XE6, SourceForge, Third Party Components, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Abbrevia and XE6

IBDAC

Posted on 20. May 2014 by roman

One of my customers is still working with Delphi 5 and wants to move to Delphi XE6. As you can imagine this is a huge step so that we have to do the conversion very carefully.

In the Delphi5 code my customer is using IBDAC for connection to a Firebird database. Since IBDAC is an active project from Devart we decided to continue using it.

I contacted Devart’s support and asked for a special MVP program and I could get a free version of IBDAC. Many thanks for that Devart!

As I looked at their website I found another interesting framework, the EntityDAC ORM. If I will find out more about this framework I will blog about it. So stay tuned.

Posted in Delphi, RAD Studio XE6, Third Party Components, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on IBDAC

Orpheus and XE6

Posted on 7. May 2014 by roman

I added support to Orpheus for Delphi XE6 and C++Builder XE6. You can find all necessary files in the SVN repo or you can download them directly from sourceforge.

Posted in C++-Builder, Delphi, RAD Studio XE5, RAD Studio XE6, SourceForge, Third Party Components, TurboPower, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Orpheus and XE6

madExcept and XE6

Posted on 25. April 2014 by roman

Today madshi sent me a private email and announced that there will be a XE6 version of madExcept this week.

I guess that most of you already know madExcept. It is a great exception handling component that shows you in the case of an exception a so called bug report with a lot of information inside. The most interesting part is the callstack which tells you exactly in which unit and line the problem occurred.

Another very important stuff is that madExcept allows you to automatically upload the bug report to your issue system. This is a must for ISO certified companies which work with automatic workflows. madExcept currently supports FogBugz, which I’m using in several projects, Mantis, which is free, and the most popular Bugzilla.

If someone would like to find out more about these workflows send me a private email or contact madshi.

Posted in Delphi, RAD Studio XE6, Third Party Components, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on madExcept and XE6