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Borland Releases Kylix 2

Tal Cohen writes "Borland Kylix 2 is now available. Most new features are geared at Enterprise-level developers; the Open edition is still available for free download. The CLX (cross-platform component library) is covered under both GNU and Borland's license." The new features list is interesting - a fair number of buzzwords, but it also looks like they are supporting a lot of the new stuff. The white papers have some interesting topics - including gcc vs. Kylix.

18 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe too late by lekter1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it's too late for Borland. Maybe two years before ...

    But now I think it's too late. Kdevelop and the recently released kdestudio 3.0 gold is playing hard.

    --

    greetings,
    lekter
    http://www.hispacluster.org
  2. Kylix 2 Already?? by chas7926 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just bought Kylix version 1 in July. I thought releasing an entire new product rather than fixing the existing product was a trick that only Microsoft pulled. I guess the economy crunch is getting to Borland as well.

    --
    Linux User #296508 Get Counted!
  3. QT Embedded support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Does this have support for generating QT Embedded applications?

    If so, then you can write PDA applications for the Sharp device in the previous story using Kylix/Delphi/Pascal++.

    Not that any non-Delphi person would want to, in my opinion ;)

    Of course, I am basing all this on the assumption that Kylix actually currently uses QT as the base GUI component set, via its own intermediary toolkit abstraction. If I am wrong here, please correct me.

  4. Re:Turbo Pascal by LeftHanded · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They went with Delphi/Object Pascal because the compiler technology was familiar to them, because the compiler is simpler, and because they wanted to take advantage of their Delphi market. Although Borland used to kick butt with its Turbo C product Back in the Day, Visual C++ from MS is now killing them in the C++ market. Delphi is a pretty popular RAD tool, not dead at all.

    --
    I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. -M.C. Escher (1898-1972)
  5. Never mind that these are the guys... by uradu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that introduced the $49 IDE back in 84, and have consistently turned out more standards-compliant C++ compilers than you know who. And your tastes obviously don't count for much if they lead you to that opinion about Object Pascal. It's still considered by many one of the most advanced and elegant natively compiled languages around. OTOH Forte is certainly not considered the greatest IDE by many. But then again, those are YOUR tastes.

  6. delphi portability? by juraj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Has someone of you used this to port Delphi app to
    Linux? I had a nice free LGPL-covered application, that
    I wanted to compile using kylix open edition. But a lot of things are different.I see a lot of units, like QDialog, QForm, etc. under Linux, but they're counterparts in Windows are Dialog, Form, etc. So is there any sourcecode compatibility? Is there a tool for doing this?

    1. Re:delphi portability? by robinjo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've ported a pretty big non-gui app. It was pretty easy. Moving from Delphi's old sockets to Indy was the biggest thing. Then I just wrote higher class classes, wrapped all the Windows api stuff in those and made a WinStuff-unit out of them. A similar one for Linux. Then some ifdefs for units and done. Now the project compiles without changes in Delphi 5 and Kylix 1.

      I hear it's even easier with Delphi 6 but haven't felt like upgrading yet.

  7. Kylix isn't Klyx by Tha_Zanthrax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They won't be sued. Kylix and Klyx are completly different apps. The name Kylix isn't stolen from Klyx. Like Delphi is also the name of a greek goddess, a Kylix is a greek fruitbowl of some sort.

  8. Stop this stupid discussion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hey, what's wrong with you people over there?? Complaining about Kylix being dead and all that. Do you guys have any idea what 'normal' developers want from a development environment? No, they don't need pointers and that bullshit. They want an easy to use ide where they can build forms and make stuff work. And they don't need C++, Pascal will do perfectly. Most apps aren't that difficult (lot of databases, etc.) and digging in the OS is therefore not necessary. And you surely don't want to spend three weeks finding out how to make gcc work.

    I've tried Kdevelop and honestly, I didn't figure out how to compile the bloody thing so I dropped it. Next thing I did was installing Kylix (wow, at last an easy installation procedure) and it worked. I've build the little app I wanted in a minute and it compiled flawlessly.

    So, unless you're a nerd (no negative connotation, just indicates that you want to spend a lot of time finding out the smallest details of your system), Kylix is an easy to use and nice ide.

    You guys should be glad that Borland did some effort for the Linux community but no, nothing but criticism. So, cut the crap and admit that Kylix is a great tool for rapidly developing apps.

  9. Measuring developer use of OSS by pubjames · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It has always been common knowledge that a key to Microsoft's dominance is making things easy for programmers so that they develop for the Windows platform. Is it just me has there been a real drop-off of interest by developers in all things Microsoft?

    I remember there was a time about five years ago when most developers wouldn't even consider developing for anything other than Windows technologies and developer's magazines reflected that. These days, however, I see very little excitement about Microsoft technologies, for instance, I don't see lot of enthusiasm amongst developers about .Net and C#. Surely with Windows being the dominant platform, and .Net being Microsoft's new technical strategy, you'd expect some excited discussion about it amongst developers, but it's just not happening.

    This is just a feeling I have, and I have been trying to think of a way to quantify it, if nothing else to prove to myself that this sea-change is actually occurring and not just because I now take my information from different sources. The simple metric I have come up with is this - the number of times a word occurs on Google:

    Linux - 30,100,000
    Microsoft - 20,100,000

    This crude metric seems to suggest that Linux has 10m more pages than all of Microsoft's products put together. Seeing as Microsoft has such a dominant position in the desktop space and is still much more of a household name than Linux, I think this is quite a clear demonstration that there is a lot more material about Linux out there than about Microsoft's products.

    This came as a suprise:

    "Linus Torvalds" - 640,000
    "Bill Gates" - 649,00

    I would have expected Bill Gates (who's a household name) to occur a lot more than Linus.

    This is also suprising:

    "Internet Explorer" - 2,730,000
    Mozilla - 2,730,000

    "Linux developer" - 20,600
    "Windows developer" - 12,200

    Is it just me, or do these figures suggest that Microsoft should be very worried indeed?

    1. Re:Measuring developer use of OSS by gorillasoft · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is interesting, but so is this:

      The numbers fluctuate.

      Here are the ones I came up with -

      Linux: 33,700,000
      Microsoft: 21,700,000

      Linus Torvalds: 610,000
      Bill Gates: 997,000

      Mozilla: 3,060,000
      Internet Explorer: 3,030,000

      Linux developer: 1,410,000
      Windows developer: 1,720,000

      I wouldn't take those numbers or yours too seriously as absolute totals, but they do make an interesting point.

      Also, one thing to note may be that by necessity there could be more documentation about Linux online than there is about MS products (lack of paper manuals for ISO downloaders, etc. could be reasons), which would lead to more hits for Linux-related pages. Still, it's interesting.

    2. Re:Measuring developer use of OSS by kin_korn_karn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's not so much a lack of interest in windows as a focus on the web. The majority of software development nowadays (judging by job postings, which indicate growth) is 2 or 3 tier client-server stuff with a web interface.

      MS has the worst web server technologies, period. Nobody in their right mind wants to run IIS for a large commercial site, it's too vulnerable to DoS/hacks. Apache on Win32 would fix this but people who are timid enough to run Windows as an internet server are going to be scared to death of the prospect of software that doesn't give them the option of running to mommy (read: tech support) when it breaks.

      Also, NT/2k x86 machines don't scale enough to handle the load of a high traffic web site. Load balancing (LocalDirectors, etc.) helps, but why fool with a room full of 1 or 2 processor Xeons when you can buy one really expensive Sun chassis and have room to grow for years without going to the trouble of integrating a new server into the network? Not to mention that x86 machines don't run so well when you try to implement failover stuff like redundant power supplies and hotswap drives on their bus.

      Last but not least, NT doesn't run EJB very well. If you want to get performance out of EJB, which is the current buzzword-compliant technology for large-scale software projects, you need a Sun box, period. I'm convinced that Sun and IBM are conspiring to cripple Java on Windows, which is just fine with me.

      In most cases, the only necessary MS-based piece I've seen in recent software development is the browser.

      MS may have the browser market tied up (with good reason, IE is nice now and XP, I hate to say it, is a great desktop OS), but they've already written a browser and have said under penalty of perjury that they'll give it away for free. They're in the process of eating their lunch on the server side in the big-ticket markets, which is where all the important stuff happens anyway.

      Stop worrying :)

  10. Re:I've fallen, Linux help me up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yet another troll who has no idea what he's talking about.

    1. Borland is very healthy financially. In fact, it is sitting on $300 million in cash.
    2. Borland's revenues (from operations) have increased over each quarter for over a year. It's stock price has doubled over the last year or so.
    3. Borland is as talented as ever. Anders may have gone to Microsoft, and cloned the Delphi language with C# to run on .NET. But Borland is creating a cross-platform library with the original C# (Object Pascal) and CLX.

    But don't let the facts bother you. Oh, and by the way - I realize that trolls don't know anything about building compliers, but anyone ( including Borland) can make a compiler based on .Net. It's far easier to make a compiler for CLI than for a CPU. So don't be surprised if Borland or another company severly undercuts Microsoft's pricing for it's new programming environment.

  11. sdl cross platform game development by iplayfast · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use Kylix and Delphi 5 to code games under Linux and Windows, using the SDL code. Same code for 2 different OS (OpenGL to boot)

    Jedi code

    For a great reference and good tutorials check out The great nehe site!

  12. The secret to the speed by vtechpilot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Borland's Object Pascal compiler is a single pass compiler. The trick is in the way everything is declared first, this allows the compiler to run through once and know ahead of time that a certain procedure or function does exist before it gets to any code that calls it.

    You can make C compile in a single pass if you put main() at the bottom, and all procedures and functions above all the other procedures and functions that call them. This way the compiler can compile FuctionA and then when it gets to main() FunctionA is already compiled. When done the other way, the compiler reads through main() then compiles FunctionA and then comes back and finishes main(). Its all that jumping around that slows down compiling.

    I've heard but haven't seen for myself that aranging the procedures and functions like this can also result in a smaller binary. YMMV.

    --
    Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
  13. Give me C++ any day by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > And just what is wrong with Pascal?

    Not trolling or meaning to start a "holy war", as this is just a personal opinion:

    - Declarations are backwards, due to the awkward grammer: name type
    Compared to the more logical C/C++ way: type name

    - The distinction between functions and procedures (the language sports an artifical difference.) The lack of parenthesis in the declaration make it difficult to quickly visually spot functions.

    - Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?) i.e. := for assign? Just give me the dam equal sign already! :)

    - Too wordy. { } are don't clutter my code whitespace, like 'begin' 'end' do.

    In short, I just hate how the language looks.

    It's the same as a person liking one spoken language over another. Sure they both can explain concepts, but which one is more compact, and is "fluent" for the person?

    Pascal is a great teaching language, and Delphi is very impressive (Borland has always had lightning fast compiles on their Pascal languages, due to the grammar.) But I'd rather take a language I hate less (C/C++) then one that gives me a grammer that I hate (Pascal & sons.)

    I like the multiparadigm support of C++.
    i.e. procedural, object orientated, and generic programming paradigms.

    For me, Pascal++ is just plain wrong, but if you're productive at using it, hey, more power to you!

    Cheers

    1. Re:Give me C++ any day by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > Just curious as to why you think the declarations are more logical one way than the other....
      > Is that just personal choice/comfort or a more fundamental difference?

      Functionaly, there is no difference.

      Personal comfort w/ respect to formatting, white space, and not needing superfluous tokens.

      I like to arrange variables in a "table" format.
      i.e.

      intnWidth ;
      intnHeight;
      char*pTexels;


      Now you can do the same thing in Pascal, but the C/C++ just seems more compact and unclutted:

      var
      nWidth :Integer;
      nHeight:Integer;
      pTexels:^Texture;


      I find this more readable too:

      void foo(
      intfoo
      , floatfoo2
      , char*foo3 )
      {
      }


      I guess it's the same reason I like my HP calc -- RPN just seems more natural.

      *shrugs*

  14. Re:Borland again... by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You truly are clueless, aren't you? This isn't about the average slashdotter. The need for a high productivity development environment for Linux is essential to move Linux into the mainstream and for its widespread acceptance in the business world supported by the IT community.

    While the argument that there are powerful, free tools for Linux holds. The generally accepted Open Source model for development tools simply will not cut it in a real IT shop. Tools used by IT shops need to be stable, robust, and supported. I like knowing that I can pick up the phone and get somebody when there is a problem that I don't have the immediate time or resources to solve. That's what I pay for.

    Users (business and home) want their favorite applications (or a strong competitor) available for an OS before they will accept it. These two areas are the niches where Delphi 6 and Kylix fill. D6 and Kylix do deliver what they promise. I can attest to that.

    Pascal as a language is generally dead. The modernized Object Pascal is an OOP language that meets many of the requirements of C++ programs. Object Pascal is far from dead. On the Windows platform, it is very viable. Because of the type safety inherent in the language, it's pretty hard to screw up development of simple apps. Yes, for pointers you need to do a few odd things. That's why we have class refernces. These are basically smart pointers. But, the object model is quite robust and capable.

    The underlying language is not dependent upon the visual elements you seem so quick to condemn. However, when a Delphi 6 or Kylix developer can sit down, write, test and deploy a SOAP service in under 10 minutes (yes..it was canned..but demonstrated at Borcon 2001)....well that's pretty amazing. Even more amazing is that with little effort, you have CGI, DSO, or ISAPI modules to fit almost any web server.

    These services have all the native support of Delphi's (and Kylix's) database and internet connectivity, a highly interactive development environment and a fully capable and visual debugger.

    Okay..I sound like a sales person. But, I'll tell you. After working with C, C++, VB, Powerbuilder and a slew of other languages, Delphi kicks butt on the Windows platform. The advent of Kylix and CLX on Linux will enable those same high powered productity and business apps developed using Delphi to be run on Linux. That's what it's all about...it's not a language war...it's about viability.