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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.
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
I just read the "what's new" page and I got e-buzz word whip lash...
They should put up some damn warnings or something.
i.e. : Build Web Services-enabled database middleware with DataSnap(TM) that scales and interoperates with your complete e-business solution...
Ok, now a serious question... is ANYONE out there using this? I've read the reviews, I read some tutorials, and my interest is sparked, but I want to here some testimony.
Why doesn't Borland just call this thing Delphi for Linux?
Notice it doesn't ever say WHAT language it uses on the website? I wonder how many developers downloaded this thing and then said, "What? I have to program in Pascal?!?!"
-Russ
Me
I spoke to a Borland rep at a trade show 2 weeks ago. She told me the beta would be available early next year.
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!
Besides, part of Adobe's gripe was that Killustrator was in a similar space to Illustrator; Klyx and Kylix are different products (development vs document processing).
I started programming with TurboC and Turbo Assembler. I'm now using Builder 5. The drag'n'drop interface is very nice, as are the make files (which are XML,btw). Borland has always had very good compilers, and the STL they use is quite nice. They also ship printed documentation, for those of us who actually rtfm. As soon as they have the C++ version done (RSN for about a year now), I'll buy it.
Best Slashdot Co
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.
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)
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.
I don't see much competition among the all-in-one development environments for Linux. Kylix is an attempt to become the MS Visual Studio of Linux. I don't see anything else as broad as this. KDevelop is kind of a Turbo C app. I'm not familiar with KDE Studio, but it seems to be the only real competition.
Developers, and especially companies, really want the grand development environment that nicely brings everything together. That's exactly why every Windows developer eventually dropped Borland's array of products and went to MS Visual Studio.
Borland here is trying to keep up with the times and learn from the past. I think this is a great step for Linux.
Developers: We can use your help.
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?
They definitely don't make it easy to "register" for the download -- first they want all sorts of personal info that really shouldn't be required (phone #, street address, etc...) - THEN, if you don't fill out EVERY field (including those not marked as required), and say "YES" to all of the spam checkboxes at the bottom, their javascript form handler balks at you.
Not to mention that you *have* to have javascript enabled to even register...
I was going to check it out -- but I *refuse* to give them free reign to spam me by phone, fax, email, and snal mail for the privilege of doing so.
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.
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.
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?
.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.
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
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?
Borland has told in their newsgroups that there will be a Kylix update. So no need to buy Kylix 2 if you just want a bugfix.
Are you nuts. This product kicks butt compared to all the other IDE wannbes. Borland is the only alternative to Microsoft and doing a great job producing the best tools. It's revenues and share price (and profits) are all up up up.
What is there not to like?
Kylix used WineLibs, not wine - which are different.
Wine is to run windows applications
winelibs are to link against winelibaries during compilation - ie, you have a windows application, and you want to compile it under linux - easier porting.
Yes, in Kylix 1 the IDE was sluggish.
Kylix 2 has less dependecy on WINELIBS, but it is still there. You can see postings on borlands news server - http://newsgroups.borland.com .
Hopefully K2 IDE will be alot faster.
I don't see where anyone has mentioned that this should be good for some businesses. In the case of a shop with split MS/Linux computers, they can write one internal business app in a RAD environment that will run on both of their systems. This allows for the good productivity of a RAD tool with the portability of Java, C, etc.
It could also be an incentive to switch over to Linux - they could have their apps written in Delphi on Windows, and then move as slowly/quickly as they want when converting to Linux without necessitating major code porting. In a slow economy, cost savings are of more obvious importance to management.
Of course, all previously MS-only code (VB, etc) would still need to be reworked, but there are benefits to be had for businesses looking at Kylix.
If Kylix takes off, it could really be a boon for Linux.
Still no support of postgresql.
Still no support of GTK. (Wtf is that gnome icon even doing in there in kylix page ?)
And is the beast still compiled against wine libs ? (Yes, the first version was compiled against wine, no matter what you say. It was, and it is)
yush
Alas, you are equating apples to oranges.
First, I am not a Java developer. But, I am aware that one of the biggest problems facing the JBuilder team was the diversity of Java VMs (i.e. some worked and some don't). JBuilder allows you to target multiple Java VMs with ease and that was a bane to releasing a "stable" product. They worked with the various Java VM teams (Blackdown is one that comes to mind) to make it compatible. JB3 was a blacksheep product. JB4 fixed many issues and JB5 is now the current product.
After having coded in C, C++, the forsaken VB and a slew of other languages, I discovered Delphi in 1994. I haven't looked back since.
Why? Because it has enabled me and my teams to develop applications in a fraction of the time that C++ would have required and substantially more stable and reliable than VB has ever been. My Delphi apps came in on or ahead of schedule and don't crash. IMO, Delphi is a secret weapon when you need to get high quality, database applications out to the market place when under a tight schedule.
Yes, Delphi has had its bogus releases (Delphi 4 in particular). D3 was very stable and D5 fixed D4. D6 now offers cross platform development capability (if you use the CLX library) via Kylix. The language, Object Pascal, is not the same as Pascal just as C++ is not C. I suggest you take a few hours and learn the differences between Object Pascal and Pascal. The only real downside to Object Pascal is it is more verbose than the equivalent C/C++ code. But, then again, it's also a lot easier to understand and maintain (a side benefit of its Pascal roots).
Kylix has bugs (just as any major new tool does). Blame that on both errors in the Kylix tool itself as well as buggy Linux distros (RH in particular). To me, the only bug that really affects me in Kylix is the fact that TThread is broke. Did they fix it in K2? Let's hope so.
My point being, is that you had a bad experience with a single Borland tool. Never mind the fact that many other development shops gave it high praise...you had a bad experience.
Before you blast Borland for putting out "inferior products at insane prices", I suggest you learn more about their products, read some serious critical reviews and then try the products yourself. You may come to realize just how far off base your statements really are.
As for the high prices...well, I can't dispute that. They did it to keep pace with Microsoft. Why? Because how can a product be good when it costs so little? Surely that other product that costs twice as much must be twice as good. Right? By that reasoning, I guess that means that Open Source and Free software must really suck. We know that's not true. FWIW, Borland now appears to be reviewing their pricing structure.
yea. i hear about this EVERY TIME I START UP BORLAND C++BUILDER. [since last year...]
man... if only i cared.
--donabal
Safety First Day?
1. For any active product, someone will have bought it just before each new version is announced, so the date you bought it isn't relevant.
2. There is very little wrong with K1, and there is a patch for that, so "fixing the existing product" isn't an issue.
3. Since it isn't a "trick" comparing it (the non-existent "trick") to MS is either silly or flamebait.
-- MarkusQ
I've been using Borland products since the early eighties, and the most I've gotten is a few mailings telling me about events in my area, product updates, and an occasional bit of free stuff. I typically tweek my address to catch/track spammers (e.g. misspell my name), and I've never had anyone else send me something using the address I gave Borland. In short, I'd trust them.
-- MarkusQ
The way it was supposed to work was that both Delphi (6 and up) and Kylix come with CLX, a cross-platform component library for both Windows and Linux. So making an app cross-platform meant porting it to CLX (which is very similar to the existing VCL), then compiling it twice. But you've managed to achieve this without access to the Windows version of CLX. Pretty impressive.
Incidentally, there's an open source version of CLX. Currently only runs on Linux, but...
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!
*that* ought to get some people to comment.
We've been using Delphi since version 1, and our flagship software (which controls a semiconductor manufacturing tool) is about 200,000 lines of Delphi 5 code. It takes about 30 seconds to compile.
We also do C++ development, with CBuilder. Our largest C++ program, about 30,000 lines, takes 10 minutes.
We've found that our object pascal code is more reliable, maintainable, and understandable than the C++ code we've developed. Even the most diehard c++-heads in our group admit that there is really no technical reason to prefer C++. The only reason they give is that it "looks better on our resume" (to that argument I reply we should be using Java).
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
but would it make sense that.. yes, MS made it easy to develop apps for a while. But after a while... the same libraries and things that made it easy also constrained programmers.. people had new ideas and new ways of doing things, and just couldn't implement them in Windows very easily.. wheras unix offered a more easy way to bring those ideas to light.
> And just what is wrong with Pascal?
:= for assign? Just give me the dam equal sign already! :)
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.
- 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
A kylix is a wine bowl. Believe it or not, that name has nothing to do with Codeweavers. There are various stories, but the one I believe is that somebody saw a picture of a bull painted on a kylix, and thought that kylix was Greek for "bull". Anyway, an "-ix" name works well for this product!
Having used both Visual Studio and Delphi, I can honestly say that Borland is way aheead in the Visual development stakes. If anything, it has been MS playing catch up in terms of tool quality.
Borland lost out to Visual Studio because of that little thing called the OS monopoly. Companies wanted the assurance that their tools are very closely tied to the OS. Borland's products are still IMO much better, and given the much leveller playing field on Linux I really hope they can succeed.
Basically, if you haven't played with Delphi/Kylix before I seriously suggest you give it a shot. It's free to try, goddamit, and I'm sure most good coders can suspend their disdain for Pascal for long enough to realise that it's actually pretty damn good.
Currently it seems 2.0 is not available in the Open edition.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Kdevelop and the recently released kdestudio 3.0 gold is playing hard.
I think I'm a fairly experienced Linux user, on the systems administration and end user level. I think I was one of the first non programmer types to be seriously interested in the OS a few years ago when I started.
I can onviously do shell scripting, and I can also seem to read most C pretty easily. O used to do Pascal and Quattro Pro (!) programming in HS but that's a while ago and I bet I'm rusty. I'd like to get into programming proper.
a) Visually oriented. I'd like to work on both Open and Closed source apps and I think there's much more of a need for GUI apps than yet another CLI text processing tool. I could write the world's first XFree86 setup program which doesn't suck! I'd like to churn out lots of widgets and menus and a RAD tool is desoigned for this purpose. That there's free (beer) versions of these tools makes them appropriate for use on OSS projects.
b) QT based. As an end user my experience of QT apps has been they they are responsive, quick and the APIs are much more stable than their counterparts. I like the speed and crossplatformability of QT, and I'd like to be able to keep a common codebase across Linux, OSX, and Win32. My understanding is that the GTK+ port for Win32 is highly beta and quite limited in ts capabilities. QT, OTOH, works well nad has been used for a number of serious business apps - eg, TOra.
c) Easy to learn and pick up. Enough said.
It seems Kylix offers me what I want, but KDevelop and KDEStudio can, IIRC, also create pure QT apps than should easily work across platforms (correct me if I'm wrong).
Problem: where to start.
* Can I get courses in Kylix aimed at those with a fair amount of computer knowledge?
* Are there any books that anyone here would recommend on the subject of Kylix which? Kylix has only been around a short while.
* Anyone recommend any on line tutorials or web sites with same code I can load into them and get a feel for the various environments?
I'll put in a plug for Python. It's clean, cross-platform, easy to learn (a core focus of the language is making things easy for nonprogrammers), and has support for QT, GTK, Tk, and some other widget libs. There are good books available for learning Python, and the Python community is fiarly strong.
Python is interpreted, so you'll won't see a lot of speed from it. Most applications don't actually need much speed, especially gui apps. However, you wouldn't want to built the SETI-at-home back end in Python, for example.
-Paul Komarek
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.
I have been using google to measure popularity for some time, the most relevant page here is my free software celebricies page. Google has some problems when used this way, the largest is that the hit count are very unstable. I have seen entries in my list go from 200 to 15.000 and back to 200 in a week, for no obvious reason. Another problem is that it is often hard to find a term that is specific enough, but not too specific. For example, Bill and Gates are both English words.
Funny. I haven't heard that. My copy ran just fine on my Windows machine. But, since I am not a Java developer, I surely didn't push it to its limits.
What platform did you install it on? What kind of HW did you have in that machine? Did you address this on the JBuilder support group? Any responses to your inquiry?
What support people? Did you have a paid corporate support plan with them or did you just use the NG? The NG is run by a group known a "TeamB". They are not paid support staff but volunteers. While they try to do their best, sometimes their answers leave much to be desired. Same thing goes with general NG questions. I've always found that questions that go answered are almost always a result of nobody knowing the answer rather than not giving a damn.
A statement like "We've fixed that in v.4 sounds like an NG response or from a dumbshit help desk person. If it came from the paid support staff, you'd expect them to offer you an upgrade or tell you how to acquire v.4". Did you ask to speak to their supervisor? In any event, if it came from their staff, a letter to Dale Fuller or David Intersimone may be in order. Believe it or not, they do answer their own e-mail.
And yes...v3 did suck. But I suggest you grab an evaluation copy of J5. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised.
Disclaimer -- no...I do not work for Borland and I am NOT on TeamB.