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Inprise/Borland Developers Conference Linux Nuggets
Inprise has offered Interbase for Linux for over a year now, which is very much worth looking at--but the problem is, the Linux version is only 5.1, where the NT, Solaris and HP/UX versions are all at 5.5, so there's been some question about Inprise's commitment to Linux. At the conference, they announced that Linux development is still going strong, and that while Interbase 6.0 would be released for NT first, its Linux release would be in the following quarter. The NT release is currently planned for mid-2000.
Inprise also announced JBuilder for Solaris and JBuilder for Linux. This is based on what they call "JBuilder PrimeTime" which is JBuilder in Java. Apparently JBuilder was originally written in Delphi, and over time they have been porting pieces of JBuilder to run natively in Java. The currently shipping JBuilder 3, which is only for Windows, is not yet 100% Java; however, JBuilder for Solaris, which will ship by the end of the year, will be. It will be followed up in short order by JBuilder for Linux in early 2000. There are strong rumors that JBuilder for Solaris was moved up at Sun's request, because they want a better development tool on Solaris than Java Workshop to prop up their hardware sales in the developer market.
With all this Linux stuff going on, there were a dozen or more Linux-oriented sessions at the conference; quite a change from last year. And of course, the Delphi team had to get their hand in. They did not make any announcements; in fact, they made it quite clear that they have not yet decided what to do. However, they did give out some results from the developer survey: The most interest is in Delphi, followed closely by C++Builder; the vast majority want a full RAD environment, not just traditional tools; native GUI support is by far the winner (as opposed to Motif or [shudder] WINE), with KDE preferred over Gnome by a small margin--though it goes unsaid that if you could have chosen more than one, everybody would have picked both. They have had 16,000 responses since the survey went on-line, which they consider an excellent turnout.
Following these announcements, they did a demo of what they've been working on so far. As many of you know, the back-end compiler is the same between Delphi and C++Builder, as of Delphi 3/C++Builder 2. What they showed was bcc running on Linux (specifically, Red Hat 6.0 using Gnome). They compiled Xgalaga with both gcc and bcc, with bcc getting the job done in a little less than half the time that gcc took. They then ran the resulting binary to show that it was real, working code. Watching the demo closely, it was also possible to see that the binary that resulted from bcc was smaller than the one gcc produced, though there's no way of telling whether this was due to smaller code or just different debugger settings. And of course the real interest is in the RAD environment, which they did not demo; the question of whether Delphi for Linux will include the VCL is yet to be answered. But it's clear that work is ongoing, and if they've already invested enough time to get bcc running, it seems quite likely that a product release will actually happen someday.
Of course, Inprise/Borland is not an open source company and all these products will be commercialware, and there are still issues to be resolved concerning how quickly they will support new kernels, libcs and distros; how nicely they will play with the other kids; how the community will react to the concept of for-pay, closed-source development tools; whether their licensing will permit you to build open source projects using Borland tools; etc; etc. There are many ways they could screw things up, and even if they do everything right, it is not at all clear that a large market exists for for-pay development tools, in the presence of really quite good free ones. However, I think the "linux market" and the "linux community" are increasingly divergent concepts, and there may well be room for Delphi somewhere in the market--if perhaps not so much in the community itself. "
>They'd have to release Delphi for Linux first if >they were to release source compatible VCL, >especially considering the fact that the VCL is >basically 100% Object Pascal code.
Unfortunately it is not. It relies heavily on sending and receiving Windows messages from and to existing Windows controls. There is nearly no code that actually does some drawing on the screen.
Hah. After all there's only 26 letters in English alphabet.
Probably we should use Vietnamese as there're over 70 letters...
I doubt that Borland has done many changes to the compiler backend. It probably does the same optimizations that it already does for the Windows platform. All they needed to change were a few API calls of the compiler itself e.g. memory allocation, file io etc. This could probably even be done by a 3rd party by providing a wrapper program around the Windows that emulates these Win32 API calls.
Most of their work probably went into the linker (or do they use the GNU linker?) and the runtime library.
Given that in 6-10 years Microsoft will be out of the OS business and be primarily developing premium apps and development tools for the Linux platform, it is important that Borland get a head start now in order to compete effectively with MS later...
Can't use the gcc compiler. Borland makes extensive use of RTTI above and beyond what gcc supports.
It is commercial, so it must be evil, right? Then why don't you work to improve the gcc compiler? Since the source is right there, nothing should stop you. Oh wait, you don't actually like to pay for anything, and will only use products whose source has been made availible so that _other_ people can work to improve on it so _you_ can reap the benefits.
If you like VC++ then I bet you would love CodeWarrior from Metrowerks. I think project management is way better and the overall modeless interface is simply refreshing. The downloadable demo doesn't do it justice (release 3). Release 5 came out a few weeks ago, and there's a Linux version also - if you get an opportunity definitely try it out. Oh .. and go Borland.
Doesn't Microsoft own part of Inprise though? It sounds alot like the deal with Apple. Microsoft buys into the competion to keep them alive and then when a law-suit come about it says: "See we have competition!!"
The difference is, you can FIX gcc, or you can get someone to do it for you. That was the point of the post which, apparently, went right over your head.
Uh - are you really able to get the source for a lot of commercial products? What you're saying sounds great in an abstract sense, but I doubt many businesses will follow your logic. I can't think of a single industry that supplies customers with enough information to reproduce the product. Do you demand a comparable level of disclosure from the makers of your processor, video card, etc. to be sure _they_ don't trash each other? I doubt it.
I was under the impression that some of the
inline assembly is gcc-specific, but that
shouldn't be hard to fix. I, too, would be
interested in rebuilding the kernel,
libc, and X11 with bcc and seeing the results.
The answer, of course, is to fix the system's incentives, rather than relying on being able to find people who will always cheerfully suffer for doing the Right Thing.
Sheesh, gcc/egcs *still* doesn't conform to the Standard? Would signing up to help them be a good idea at this point, or do they just not give a damn?
Compile speed is a big deal? How many releases do you start testing per week? Are you only recompiling modules whose dependencies have changed?
No. You misunderstand. bcc has lots of proprietary extensions that gcc doesn't.
Don't be paranoid, please. It was said that they decided on showing the compiler Demo even though they only got it to finally work on the plane as they were coming into the conference. The Linux guy is also on the JBuilder team so I'm sure his schedule was pretty full, so I doubt they "took some time" to find a project that would look good with their stuff.
Borland has excelent optimization technology, and they've always been great at compilation speeds.
Nobody knows about runtime speeds, and I doubt they have tested it. But also remember that this was in no way a promise of them actually releasing anything.
PrimeTime looked great though.
Borland is doing the right thing porting Delphi or C++/Builder. We don't need JBuilder. It's possibly a little useful, but if you're developing Java, you don't care what platform you're on. We don't need 3gl. We have Emacs+gcc, which has a steep learning curve, but works well. However, Linux really lacks a good 4gl tool.
I would like to see it based on GTK rather than Qt, though. No licensing fees for commercial development, and fully free (not patchwork) for free development.
Well it was fine if you wanted to know which VB wizard in an upcoming version would do some cool functionality, but as for nuts and bolts the Borland Conf was an order of magnitude more worthwhile.
Better presentations, More Depth, and less marketroids doing product demos on your time and dime!
Like most of the readers here you miss the distinction between free as in cost and free as in liberty-to-fix. Commercial is great. Long live money! Proprietary is what makes this whole thing stink. I filled out their survey in all honesty. I would be more than happy to give them several hundreds or even thousands of dollars (its my livelihood too, after all) if they were to release their compiler for the rest of us to work on, i.e. as free software. I thought it was cool that you could actually express this opinion in their survey, since the concept is totally lost on most commercial vendors. However it seems they ignored this angle entirely, and thus I have no use for them. They are just another closed compiler. If you want a fast, broken, non-fixable compiler, there's already a dozen vendors in the linux market. what do they all have in common? you cannot fix them, but rather you must sit on your tail, waiting, praying to the almighty managers that someone gets allocated to fix a bug which you yourself could have polished off in an evening.
I _really_ want VisualGTK. Any developer to do this one?
you bet your ass it is
his angle entirely, and thus I have no use for them. They are just another closed compiler. If you want a fast, broken, non-fixable compiler, there's already a dozen vendors in the linux market. what do they all have in common? you cannot fix them, but rather you must sit on your tail, waiting, praying to the almighty managers that someone gets allocated to fix a bug which you yourself could have polished off in an evening.
Oh right, you mean fast and bug-free like GCC... Since you're such a skilled compiler hacker, why haven't you "polished" off the GCC bugs on one of your free nights?
You like C++ Builder??? I used Builder 3.0 Professional a while back and I thought it was a rather poor imitation of Visual Basic. (given how little respect I have for Microsoft products, that's saying quite a bit) Just building a stupid toy front end for a database I ran into all kinds of problems where I'd change something in one file but the program was too poorly written to acknowledge the change. I also had problems where some of the automatically generated code for the various objects wouldn't compile and I'd have to make sense of their gibberish extensions to the C++ language and fix it by hand. Maybe it's gotten better with version 4 or whatever they're on. I certainly hope so. Especially if they're making a cross platform product. But my view is that VB is a much slicker product that actually works some of the time. It just products slow programs that aren't at all portable.
In many ways, they are extremely similar:
There are also non-usability issues:
But hey, VC++ is good enough that I use it every day for debugging, and use emacs to edit code...
They could just start making retargetable compilers. I know of one out there for Linux and other OS's, called lcc, which can produce machine code for sparcs, alphas, and some other hardware platforms. This would be a lot harder to do, but it would be worth it as Linux grows in popularity.
They could just start making retargetable compilers. I know of one out there for Linux and other OS's, called lcc, which can produce machine code for sparcs, alphas, and some other hardware platforms. This would be a lot harder to do, but it would be worth it as Linux grows in popularity.
It should base on Qt instead of Gtk. Qt is much easier and ... It is quite reasonable to charge
if you do commerical devel.
without trying to start a holy war, I will have to agree in principle. I use vim for all my developpment, for much the same reasons.
I only hope Inprise doesn't try to come up with a quick hack and expect the Linux community to buy into it. Delphi or CBuilder on Wine *please* - I wouldn't even take the time to download that. Delphi is a great tool - I think its the best RAD tool on the market, but Delphi was made and designed to run on Windows - I hope they don't try to make a direct port of Delphi to Linux. Ideally this would be nice and it would save a lot of coding time, but in reality it would mean many, many wrappers and many hacks that would probably make the port a piece of shit. So what I would really like to see is a new RAD tool that was designed from the groud up to be platform independent - ei: one that is made to use the GTK or GTK+ - the GTK has been ported to many OSes, why not use it as a base for portability - that way Inprise can also contribute back to the community by fixing bugs and adding features to the GTK or GTK+. Linux is not Windows and it shouldn't be used like Windows, so why attempt a port to Linux of a tool specifically designed for Windows.
just my $0.02
Might be a good thing to do before telling others not to use it.
big lol
Wow! I grew up using pascal, and loved it (started on tp 3 or 4). I've switched to c, but would be in heaven if I could develop pascal code commercially in linux! I mean that would be something.
true, how many of us have egcs symlinked to cc or gcc for convenience
closed = bad
free = good.
commercial + free = good. (but honestly, who would pay big bucks for compiler he or she could download?) I mean it sounds nice in theory, but lets face it, what most people really want is a free beer.
Is the kernel gcc-specific?
not just that, I don't think you can even build it on anything but linux. (I only tried with gnu-cygwin, so I may be a complete bozo
obviously it will be more like the borland dos/windows tools.
Did you take the time to write them and let them know that *BSD compatibility is important?
If they don't know...they can't ship.
The VisiBroker source code contains already #define LINUX lines.
It's wonderful that Borland support both CORBA and COM. For the Linux version, I would like to program with CORBA (definitely not COM) and yet still want communication with Windoze COM based apps (I hope COM would eventually fade away...but...). I don't have any CORBA/COM experience, yet, so I don't know about any issues that would involve. If a solution to this CORBA and COM communication problem can be provided, it would certainly be a bonus.
The big problem with VC++ is that it doesn't support anything resembling real C++. "new" still returns NULL for failed allocations, "for" scoping is wrong, if you compile with their "ANSI C++" switch, you can't compile some of the standard headers (including )
Inprise seems to be making an effort, although egcs and gcc-2.95 are getting pretty close as well.
One thing I didn't see mentioned was performance... how did BCB's output compare to gcc? and what version of gcc was it, egcs or the hopelessly-outdated 2.8.x?
AFAIK there are 2 projects atm that are developing a pascal based RAD framework
Lazarus http://www.pcpros.net/~vbman/
and
Megido http://www.megido.org
Both are in heavy development. I have the impression that the lazarus team is more active, but I haven't used either of them yet so I can't reaaly tell about the quality of them
Borland is evil and it does not deserve to exist.
They have created quite a confortable toolset
for Pascal (TP) and they even implemented quite
a resonable object-oriented language based on it...
and everybody knows that Pascal is bad and damanges
the brain of potential C programmers and hackers.
(ok... basic is worse, much worse, even worse than Cobol)
Say no to this conspiracy; say no to all "application languages" based on
pascal like sintax (or modula-[2-7] sintax)... read and learn by heart
"Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language" and you will understand! [More seriously: Borland being interested in linux is a good thing(tm), but please remember that a compiler is quite a different thing for a U*IX user and for a Dos/Windows/etc. programmer. It has to be remarked expecially that under unices the libc is part of the system, while in other environments it is shipped as part of the compiler. The only way for borland to be succesful would be either to have a great IDE that overwelms everything that is available right now (I don't know how) both in ease of use and in power, or to have a superior compiler technology, able to do real optimizations for archiectures like the Pentium (classic and MMX) one, where gcc and egcs support is not great. It is worthwile to remember that the best compiler under DOS (last time I have used it... that is more than 4 years ago) used to be Watcom and not Borland and that people used to buy the latter for the IDE and the former for the generated code.]
FreeBSD is dying. All of BSD has fallen on hard times. FreeBSD is in serious trouble; Walnut Creek is struggling to stay afloat. Rumor has it that it is up for sale. BSDI growth is flat. And then there are the "also-rans" NetBSD, OpenBSD etc--no comment needed. BSD never caught on with users, and odds are that it never will amount to more than the niche OS that it has always been. Unable to attract younger users, a BSD BOF is looking more and more like an AARP coffee klatch. The BOF chit chat is now just as likely to center around prostate problems and "regularity" than it is to BSD topics. The twilight years of BSD are now upon us. A "Kevorkian" may eventually be in order. Who will be the first to "pull the plug"?
You just have to study C++ more.
"properties" be easily made with C++ operation overloading and templates.
Object pascal hasn't ever come to the power of C++
For a long time I watched talks about borland movements to port their stuff into Linux
:) )
But reading this comment about I could not keep silence any more.
First I must say I tried all the DOS/WIN/OS compilers you all mentioned and some others just because in country where I live all that you pay great bucks costs just $2 (If it fits onto one CD
And I cat say for sure - Bugland tools, especially Borland C++, about which there are so many discussions, are among the worst concerning performance, bugless, quality. The only one tool that was REALLY good I must admit is TP 6.0-TP 7.0, although object-oriented technology implementation is awful. Turbo C was just average - not really bad (till one time it screwed my _disk_ just because of mistake with config files) but when comparing to others... Turbo C++ and BC++ 2.0 are really nothing but a bunch of bugs - the only compiler that've hunged my maching during compilation (even during compiling some of their examples). BC++ 3.0-3.1 isn't much better. actually you can name it BC, because C++ish development is almost impossible there - many times trying to compile C++ program I've encounted internal errors, GPFs, misscompilations and so on.
And their "optimization" is just a joke - they fail on the simpliest code snippets.
As to BC++4.x-5.x - to my opinion they a not worth even CD medium not the hundreds bucks they sell it for. Bugs, bugs, bugs. Huge and totally unsuitable for development. Developing even simpliest app is a pain there
Hey you poor ones who say Bugland makes good C/C++ compilers! Take a look at for example watcom C/C++ and newer say that again.
You, who say that delphi VCL is great: just try changing font size in Windows Or just run it at 640x480 Does your app looks so great as it was?
You, who want compartibility: Can you use Delphi xxx dcu in Delphi yyy. Even that is impossible.
You, who want good and small apps. Forgot, that "Hello world" in VCL is ~400Kb at D4 ? And look just how much time it took Bugland to begin
using shared libraries in Delphi ? How much will it take for them to implement ELF shared libs ? And they even cannot avoid modifying C/C++ and O Pascal syntax !
You, who say that Bugland cares about his customers. If I've bought D 3.0 and you know it crashes or produces 'internal compiler error', help is really broken. just how do I upgrade to 3.01 ? The answer is I can't.
The main concept of Delphi's popularity is simple : You just have to know pascal as they taught you it at school or you may even don't know it - and you are a "Delphi programmer", even an idiot can develop delphi apps. Drag-point-click, thats it. And for other cases there is a magic word - component. Component for everything. But you know the Merphi's principle:
"develop a system that can be used even by an idiot and only idiot be willing to use it. One thing : My hobby also is cracking. That means I have to dissasemble inspect and understand insights of a program, it's easy for me to
tell what language and compiler where used with just one look at disassembly. I've cracked really a lot of progs and I can say for sure:
ALMOST NO ONE BIG SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
COMPANY USES BORLAND
all big projects use either MSVC or Watcom C/C++. Some rather small shareware apps use Delphi. And almost no one uses Borland C/C++.
It's like Windows - easy intuitive, but when it comes to the question of quality - people preffer not to use it
Kolya.
Actually, there is one commercial software I use under Linux, it's idl (www.rsinc.com)
However, IDL's performance sucks compared to Win, probably because they use gcc as their compiler. Only this year has RSI started to use glibc2! (they were using redhat 4.x to compile idl for a lonnnnng time). Commercial software just lags behind,,, but the point is, if a compagny wants to make money out of commercial software, pleaaase, stay tuned to some of the issues in the Linux world! (like freshmeat, slashdot, whatever, pay a geek to monitor those sites for you 8-) For instance, in IDL, use bcc and intel's fast math libraries and give us something worth the 2000$ per licence we pay for it.
Of course, I'm just dreaming, this is never going to happen.
---
What have you given back to the community?
In the not-too-distant future:
To: Borland Guys
From: Guy who payed for your compiler
Subject: broken compiler
your compiler is broken. I payed good money for it, and then tried to compile my copy of splizquux on the new IBM/motorola/digital/amd/transmeta chip (which linux has been available on for 18 months now), and it didn't work. upon disassembling the code I found that it was incorrect assembly being emitted from your compiler. Furthermore the exception handling was broken and it wasn't threadsafe. here's a detailed report on how to do these things correctly on that CPU... blah blah
To: Lower Life Form
From: Borland Bottom-Line Supremacy Department
Subject: sorry
That CPU is not really our number one unit-selling platform. It's not worth the money for us to fix it. I'm afraid it'll be a while before you'll be able to see that bug fixed, if ever. Furthermore by disassembling our emitted code, you have violated your license agreement (you must dispose of the compiler immediately) and the WIPO 2003 "Digital Consumer Protection Act". We are now going to sue you for reverse engineering. You may never use a compiler again. Have a nice day, and remember to "Buy Borland, Cause our Compiler is 0.2% faster than the Red Menace GCC!!!"
First - the legalese : I'm an employee of Borland / Inprise but I'm writing this in strictly personal and entirely unoffical capacity. Everything I say here is completely devoid of any offical status.
That said;-
Yes, we are serious about Linux. We're a commercial company so we have to find some way to coexist with Open Source to our mutual benifit.
We think we can do that and offer useful products to Linux developers and commercial users of the OS.
As to the products; I have the Java release of JBuilder running on my Linux machine right now; and it is awesome
I also have the tech-demo of IBM's Linux Visual Age for Java and that, too, is excellent. Which one you prefer comes down to the RAD paradigm you like most.
Linux JBuilder needs JDK1.2 to run. VAJ is (mainly) native binaries but the two IDEs seem to run at the same speed. The JBuilder team did an excellent job of getting JB to run very fast and stable.
As noted, our port of bcc to Linux compiles about twice as fast as does gcc. I do not have direct experience of the compilation times at present but I am informed that it does indeed run faster and produces smaller binaries. The exact gains depend on the compiler options selected.
We also have a bunch of other stuff poised in the wings awaiting offical release...
Cheers,
Linc.
Overall, I think the Microsoft Developer Conference was a bit more lively, though. (:
GNU C(and friends) make fantastic embedded cross-compilers. I love them but...
Borland make the worlds fastest compiler. There's been a lot of talk about bcc being faster than gcc but you people forget that C++ is just an addon. The real compiler is the Object Pascal one that forms the core of Delphi. Some basic experiments I have done indicate that it is 10-20 times faster than bcc.
I can build the current system I'm working on (50k lines in 5 or so EXEs) in under 40 seconds on a PII-233. An equivalent sized(in LOC) C++ program takes somewhere between 5-10 mins to compile. This is before you see that it usually takes 5 lines of C++ where 1 line of Pascal would do...
Whatever, dude. It's a hash collision, and adding more letters won't help when you already have popular letters. You could also capitalize the B, under UNIX, (or is it Unix? :) or use longer names, but don't you think a better long-term solution would be to try not to use names that are already taken?
:)
After all, we have cc, bcc, gcc, lcc, and probably a few others, why have another bcc when you could have icc, or vcc, or cb or something. I'm sure the marketing people just spend all day thinking up better names, anyhow, put them to use for once.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
In Unix, bcc is a GPL'ed compiler for producing 386 binaries. I realize that bcc has been the 'Borland C Compiler', but we really don't need more than one C Compiler on the same platform, with the same name. That's just trouble waiting to happen.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The only way would be to find the best possable flags for that specific system, for that specific code (in the above case, a benchmark itself written in C). And the results would still be suspect because it would only show the results for that specific hardware, and that specific code.
In my mind, my solution is this, if/when I want a new compiler, I realize that I have got by with gcc/egcs for such a long time, I'll find the person who is working on the code specific to the hardware I am running, and donate money or equiptment directly to that person. Only other choice would be to pay for something that is "closed" and hope they did a good job, and hope it was a value. ;-) So...
gcc/egcs isn't perfect, and has a ways to go, but it sure is a dang good value, and I believe it will get better. When open source comes up, I belive gcc/egcs is a better success story than Linux, FreeBSD, or any other piece of software, because without the compiler, the software would never be were it is today.
Don't forget the impending gcc 2.95 release. I would like borland to use g++ so that it would be link compatible with linux c++ libs like mico/TAO etc.
Remember c++ compilers are not link compatible. If you've ever tried to link to a MS c++ lib on NT from borland you will know that.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
The VCL is a rather complex wrapper around windows common controls. I really believe that it would be possible to modify VCL to wrap around GNOME or KDE controls. Thus you could use the "C++ Builder for Linux" with either widget set.
I've actually considered writing something like this for my own use. (IE could pretty easily port my windoze apps over to KDE or GNOME)
Most of the code in my stuff is standard C++ and the only problems I've had porting the stuff is GUI development. I'd really like to be able to drag and drop GUI widgets in the manner Builder does it on Windows.
Ex-Nt-User
Why should a KDE/Gnome VCL do Win32's right thing?
Honestly, programmer lazyness... I'd prefer to be able to just do a recompile between a Windoze version and Linux version.
If making a source compatible VCL for GNOME/KDE would indeed be a hack (and not "The Right Thing") I could do with some incompatibilities. Especially on new projects where I could do the #ifdef thing. And have the incompatibilities on my mind when writing the code.
With old projects it's a different story, I have at least 6 apps that would be worth porting. But I wouldn't have the time to invest in modifing them to compile for Linux. Thus the usefulness of such a tool would decline for me.
Ex-Nt-User
ps. Just for the record I would prefer a VCL that would do the right thing.
I'm stuck writing code for NT at work. I'm working on some Linux code but it's not officially sanctioned. I'm doing it to prove to management it can be done and work as well if not better then NT.
Most of the code is done in C++ Builder because the GUI development is extremely fast and flexible. If Borland would release source compatible VCL and C++ Builder for Linux I don't think my management could argue againts doing everything in Linux. On top of that I could just re-compile all my apps to Linux in not time.
Ex-Nt-User
Edit-and-continue is indeed a feature of VC++ 6.0, but it does its magic by including empty space in the executable and using this space to patch the .EXE. (See patch space in the Jargon File.) Hence, it's precisely equivalent to VB, where its edit-and-continue comes as a virtue of it being an interpereted language; not only that, but edit-and-continute is not going an option for a release build. I find that gcc's "-O2 -g" gives a reasonable compromise for testing new code.
Edit-and-continue is all very well, but in my experience with VB (admittedly not extensive) in about 50-70% of cases where I make a change to a running program, it needed to be restarted. The kinds of errors you tend to make will dictate how useful edit-and-continue is to you. For instance, if you alter a template definition, it's likely that a rebuild will be needed.
As for me, I tend to build about once an hour or so when I am writing and debugging extensively. Otherwise, I try to write the entire class or module and understand that it is correct before I build it.
Excuse me if this is slightly confused; I'm a tad tired.
Paul.
However, compilation times and executable size are nice, but the real test will be runtime performance. Unless it produces faster code, no-one will use it...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
See what I mean about closed-source software... (in this case Netscape...) You can't trust it.
Loren Osborn
And I don't think they're really trying to put down gcc
That was not the intention, we are tring to add value to our products and speed, both compilation speed and speed of the executable, is generaly very important to compiler users.
Just my, very personal, $0.2.
--Paolo
The first software product I've ever purchased (not including bundled stuff) was Turbo Pascal 6.0 Professional. I made a living with this thing (and later with Borland Pascal 7.0, and then Delphi) for YEARS. When Delphi for Linux is released, I will buy a copy, even if I might never use it; just to show my gratitude to (whatever is left of) Borland.
- Tal Cohen
I wonder if it will compile the kernel. I am curious as to the difference in size and speed of a gcc-compiled and bcc-compiled linux kernel.
Is the kernel gcc-specific?
It would be interesting to try on things like X11 and window managers; things of that sort.
-Gabriel
I personally think that any figures this early in the dev cycle would be silly.
:)
much better to wait and compare two release compilers
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
lazarus is aiming to produce a delphi like environment (not there yet but they're moving fast).
It's available here.
It's using Free Pascal as its base.
"you can stop at a breakpoint, change the code and carry on running "
"Would I want to see it in Delphi or C?"
FYI, edit-and-continue is a feature MS VC++ 6.0.
I fail to see what the winblows API has to do
with a bcc working under Linux.
I would think of the borland compiler much
like the dos or OS/2 compilers. They are
tailored for the particular environment.
I've always like the Turbo and Borland products
can't wait to get my hands of their Linux
versions.
No. The demo was on the big screen at the convention center ballroom. There was no opportunity to inspect the setup or see much of what was going on.
Remember, it's very early in the development cycle. Who knows what kind of jury-rigging was used to get it to work at all. And I don't think they're really trying to put down gcc. They just want to show that they have a compiler and it has strengths. We'll have to wait for an actual product before we can really see what the deal is.
-Graham
Me too, actually. And while I was never an OS/2 fan, a lot of OS/2 people are quite unhappy about the way Borland dropped that platform. It's true that Borland could burn a lot of people by shipping a Linux product and then dropping it later. But the interesting thing is, they will then have done a lot of work teaching us (the community) why a RAD tool is useful, how it should work, etc, etc. If they release and then drop a Delphi-for-Linux, they'll have done a great deal towards the free Delphi-clone-for-Linux project that will result. Nothing like a huge number of frustrated developers with an itch to scratch...
For one, I'll walk over hot coals for a linux compiler that will do Object Pascal. I've got about 100K lines of code, all of which is back-end business logic for massive multi-dimensional data processing, and I want to run it on Linux BAAAD.
I don't care about UI's and widget sets. We're going to wrap a Java/Web interface around it anyway.
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I personally think that Object Pascal is a better OO language than even Java. (Damn sure it's better than C++) One word: Properties. I _miss_ properties when I'm programming in Java. I shouldn't have to care whether I'm assigning a value to a variable or calling a setter method. That peculiarity of the implementation should be hidden from me, goddamit! Ok, maybe Delphi need's 'interfaces' the same way Java has them, but Java needs Properties.
I truly hope Borland commits to Linux. They've been building the best PC compiler tools for at least a decade, and there's a lot of good code written in their tools that it would be good to port.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
bugbear 3001 wrote: 111?
I don't understand.
Nice story. Had me fooled for a few seconds.
D
----
..on a big projet, where one developer has his libraries on a different drive? That damn project files insist on hard coding paths. VERY annoying. Even after switching to CVS for code management this behaviour is still a problem.
Now, go try a mixed language project with VS - when you want, say, your Java and C code browsed. Does not work right, does not it? Go try Source Navigator for that - just don't use the default editor - link it to x/emacs. Now that an IDE.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
emacs is the best IDE for C/C++ development. Emacs gives me syntax highlighting, auto-formats code, can do recursive file searches for #define's, variables, and function definitions (etags are the best), it can jump blocks of code, match parins, match #define's and #end's, etc. I used to use VC++ and Borland C++ editors - I just have no need to any more. I can do everything in emacs (including compile, and debug using gdb) just as well and I don't have to deal with awfull project files and auto-generated 10K makefiles that are anything but usable.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Relax, everyone knows that AOL ripped off IBM's innovative OS/2 SHIFT+INSERT technology, which failed only due to POOR IBM MARKETING!!!!
I'm sure Apple is somehow to blame too.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I noticed one of the options on the developer survery asked whether there was any preference for using existing open source tools.
IMHO it would be very nice if Borland/Inprise used GCC and the other GNU tools as a backend (and submitted improvements to their code bases as needed!) while using their IDE and RAD tools on top. I think people would pay for this, the community would benefit from some source improvements, and there would not be the overhead of supporting another compiler. Metrowerks seems to be doing this with their Codewarrior "GNU edition." Does anyone know how well this works?
Borland would have to be careful not to violate the open source tool's licensing, but this shouldn't be impossible.
-OT
This is definitely a step in the right direction. We need more RAD tools for Linux, especially if we want it to grow effectively. There's Appgen, which I've never tried, but Appgen seems to be pretty much proprietary (use Appgen-developed apps with Appgen developed DBs). There's Glade, and KDevelop, but I don't think you can really consider those to be enterprise level applications.
What would be nice also, is if Sybase could port Powerbuilder over to run/compile on Linux. It is, to me, unrivaled as a GUI application development environment.
Kudos to Borl--Inprise, and hopefully they run ahead of schedule. I'm sure there will be a very nice market for commercial development apps, plus it will add a bit of diversity to the compiler world for Linux. Just because it's not free, doesn't make it bad...
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
As for GUI development, VC++ is really not any good in that environment. After having use Powerbuilder and (shudder) Visual Basic, I can't see any reason at all to use VC++ for GUI development. And now you have an interface that mimics VC++?? For shame!! Everyone is entitled to use what pleases them, of courses, which is one of the guiding principles behind Linux, but what we need is not imitations of life-sucking programs which Microsoft foists on the public, but innovative new programs which foster RAD, or for companies to port existing excellent software over to Linux, like Inprise is doing.
That being said, let me qualify by saying that I've never tried Kdevelop, and probably won't ever, because it requires Qt/KDE, and I have enough libraries without adding another set + desktop environment.
Still, anything that reminds me of Microsoft on my Linux machine is summarily deleted.
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
Regarding the bcc name clash:
Most of the java compilers I see are called javac. There are other examples of name clashes out there that I'm too lazy to dig up. It's just an executable name, not a product name. If you develop regularly with both the Borland C Compiler and this 16-bit compiler, you might have to go out of your way. The rest of us can set a link to the one we use and forget about it.
100,000 lemmings can't all be wrong.
Windows-style development tools allow both the API designers and the application programmers to delay facing up to, and fixing, serious design problems with their systems.
For example, the MFC class libraries have serious problems in their inheritance hierarchy, but rather than fixing them, Microsoft just adds a bunch of wizards to their development tool to do manual delegation.
Similarly, the VC++ GUI design tools result in GUIs that, for the most part, use fixed layouts that don't work well at different resolutions, and they generate code that is difficult to maintain.
To me, Windows-style development tools give the appearance of making development easier, but in the long run they have a negative impact on the quality of both the OS and the application code.
Bringing a lot of the Windows development tools to Windows risks bringing Linux down to the same level as Windows. I hope that the traditional Linux community will be strong enough to keep those kinds of influences from doing real damage.
Linux development tools aren't perfect, of course, but I think Windows-style development tools are the wrong place to look for improvements. We don't need more windows or buttons, we need better tools support for specifying, composing, analyzing, and verifying large software systems.
(In case you are wondering, yes, I have developed in VC++, Borland, and UNIX, and I'm currently a full MSDN subscriber.)
Has anyone tried FreeBuilder (www.freebuilder.org)? How does it compare to JBuilder? It's supposed to be pure Java, and running on Linux now...
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Don't. Last thing you need is wondering if it was your fault or your IDEs ( specially, when trying to learn something)
VC IDE is very nice to develop with... I have talk with many people and they agree, it is just about best IDE for C++ available ( MFC is a different story)
From what I have heard, under certain circumstances, it is not uncommon for a company to use one compiler for development and another one to produce production builds (internal releases, betas, final releases, etc.). You pick the compiler that gives you the fastest compilation time for development and the one that produces the smallest, fastest code for the final thing. Of course, in this day of wholly incompatible compilers and ultrafast desktop machines, this isn't so common any more, since you would spend more time making the code compile on two compilers (at least as far as windows is concerned) than you would save.
-Cheetah
IIRC from discussions at news://forums.inprise.com/interbas e.public.linux and news://forums.inprise.com/interb ase.public.general, InterBase 5.6 -- and that would be final release of 5.x codebase -- should be released for NT and Linux at the same time.
If this rumours happen to be true, this release would be any DBA's dream -- imagine a product with feature set freezed, and bug set seriously restricted.
All in all, one can hardly question Inprise/Borland commitment to Linux after all this.
Why on earth not? Compiledd languages frequently also have good Interpreters. (It's also true that some interpreted languages can't be compiled... but that's different, and sometimes they are good choices too, depending on what you do)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Anybody else notice that this is the first wide-spread survey regarding developer mindshare of GNOME and KDE? Seems they're about even, which I suppose is a good thing. Sure, the statistics are probably biased (maybe one group hates Inprise or commercial software more than the other; maybe one group hates surveys), but it is neat to see.
You heard correctly. The ANSI standard does not specify a format.
SOS : Standards Often Suck
--- Bill
Just to keep it simple: VC++ sucks. And it has since 1.0.
Delphi has been intuitive since 1.0.
VC++ is like a drug habit: debilitating.
--- Bill
commercial bad
free good
As one who has observed Borland since their beginnings, I can happily state that I trust their work, their eithics, and their concerns for quality. I have used more high quality products from Borland than from any other vendor.
--- Bill
I not only don't want to have to cross compiler brands, I'd very much prefer a good compiler which is controlled by a single vendor. No committees, no camels. Delphi is my tool of choice. Lean, mean, and very capable. Well designed, well supported, and well documented.
--- Bill
Borland has a strong compiler, which has always done well in performance, both compile time and run time. It has also done well in ANSI compliance, and as it has been the common back end for Delphi and C++ Builder, Borland's commitment to making it good is the at the core of their business.
Borland also has, in Delphi and C++ Builder, strong RAD tools which will make it very easy for thousands of Windows programmers to move apps to Linux, furthering the growth of the Linux community.
The range of their questions in the survey, and their willingness to publish preliminary findings shows that they are committed to delivering what the market seeks.
As to commercial software, I welcome paying for a great tool, rather than getting a good one for "free". My time is worth much more than I will pay for the tool, and my experience with Borland tools gives me confidence that lack of source access is not an issue.
Borland's VCL has not been open source, though developers do have source access to most of it. There are patent issues involved, and I would expect to see the source access to the VCL remain much the same under Linux.
I have already invested thousands of dollars of my time in Linux, and am not yet ready to try to ship a product. If I had Delphi, or C++ Builder, I would have reduced that investment by an order of magnitude, and would be hard at work on my applications.
Please, Borland, move with all possible speed!
--- Bill
There is one thing that your report does not mention about the gcc vs. bcc comparison: was there any way to compare the speed of the compiled code?
It is nice to know that bcc compiles faster than gcc. This is interesting for those of us who are writing code and compiling all day. But when the end users install the software on their machines, they mostly care about the speed of the executable (compilation time does not matter much).
-Raphaël
I don't see a huge difference between the linux market and the linux community. They are mostly one and the same. There will be some people who aren't in the market, refusing to buy anything, and downloading everything. These people are rare (even 1.89$ for a distro disk counts as a purchase). Then there will be the truly clueless who buy JBuilder for Linux to run on their WinBox. Everyone else is both using Linux and buying stuff for Linux.
Yes, there are hardcore Linux users and lightweight, parttime Linux users. But they are both part of the community.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
They had an excellent TUI complete with buttons, windows, pop down menus, radio and check boxes, text editing, etc. It was extremely well thought out and unbeatable for C++ development/learning in text mode. Worked both with mouse and keyboard.
They now distribute it freely. I couldn't find a complete license agreement but you should be able to develop BSD style licensed programs with it blazingly fast (at least the UI when you become acquainted). It is now ported to Linux though I haven't had a chance or trying it but you can download it here:
Even in DOS days when I bought BC++ 3.10, TVision came with its complete source code. I made a database program combining it with Paradox Engine. The whole thing worked flawlessly without a memory manager, i.e. with less than 640 kB. I plan to do the same thing with some free SQL in Linux one day.
There's a lot of issues that come up when a commericial compiler will be available that is likely to become very popular. I'm willing to bet that lots of people would buy Delphi for Linux (including myself). But, I want the apps that I write to be runnable on alphas, sparcs, ppc, as well as x86. Normally, with gcc, this isn't a problem -- you simply distribute the source with your app and let them compile it... or get a friend to do it if you're weird. There's one thing that you CAN assume -- that almost every Linux user will be able to use your app... because almost everyone has gcc.
Now, with Delphi I don't think you could do this. I don't know how I'd be able to ensure that Linux/Alpha users would be able to use something I programmed in Delphi. So, I came up with one idea.
What if Borland freely distributed their compiler that handled Delphi source code, for all Linux platforms? Maybe they're already planning on doing this, but I'm not sure. Anyways, they could still sell the RAD environment and the tools. This way, you could even write open source Delphi applications.
One problem with this is that people would be able to code without the RAD environment, and just edit the source files.. and thus not needing to buy Delphi. But I'm sure Borland could figure a way around this.
So, to conclude, I guess what I'm trying to say is that Borland should seriously consider the ability to produce applications that can be ran on all Linux platforms, not just x86 / glibc2 / qt / whatever.
I use KDevelop almost exclusively now. There are maybe 2 or three crashing bugs that I've seen, but most of those are rare and/or fixed in CVS versions. It is by far the best way to learn about KDE/Qt programming, because it includes great documentation and an AppWizard to get you started.
Needless to say, I'm a big fan.
--JZ
I really wish the guys at Troll-Tech could work out a licensing agreement to make a version of Qt price-competitive with commercial Motif. I mean a Unix-only version exactly like Qt-free, but with a license to let you produce commercial software with it. It's an amazing product, and we could see Borland QtDelphi and C++-builder with Qt-GUI. Mmm...
Commercial and free development can, indeed must, exist side-by-side.
BTW: Whoever mentioned that they like Visual C++ should check out KDevelop (www.kdevelop.org). Its interface is basically identical to VC++.
--JZ
I heard that c++ doesn't have a standard for name mangling. Does bcc use the same name mangling as gcc?
If I have, for instance, a qt shared library compiled with gcc can I use it with a program compiled with bcc?
Has anyone spent a little time with this program? The screenshots look nice and people seem to have favorable things to say about it, but I was wondering just how stable it is at this point (0.4, I think), and how many features are implemented. I would really like to use this program to help teach myself QT.
maybe now we'll see some other movement from other company's to port development tools to linux...as much as I hate to say it, microsoft's VC++ actully has a nice interface.
I don't know the exact number, but there are over 40,000 commonly used characters.
anyway, there are several free letters in english, they could use tcc, since a lot of there stuff starts with 't' for 'turbo' all of there windows encapsulaton classes back with borland C++ 4 were 't' somthing
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
um, you did you know you can get rid of all that crome, right? all of those toolbars can be removed, and the individual buttons can be put wherever you want. so you can make one toolbar just for yourself.
I've removed everything but the menubar (and I put 3 buttons on it, fullscreen, save all, and the button that shows/hides the output screen).
but I can understand why you wouldn't know that, it's so hard *right click in the work space* and all.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
it's refreshing to see yet another compiler for c/c++ out there. I hope people don't start thinking it's an intrusion in the unix world to have a commercial compiler.
it seems to be that it is no longer a commercial environment with little patches of freeness such as linux and *bsd (most of at least) but a free world with some great commercial products out there as well as great fre ones.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I will believe it when I see it. I have a full page ad for TurboPascal for the Amiga in my library.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Its nice to see that my favorite compiler-producing company is coming to the unix world. The sexiest thing that would make their products an instant sell for me is a well done RAD environment (I haven't managed to find a freeware one, and am more than happy to lay down the cash for a good commercial product).
Its somewhat of a pity (though understandable) that they are headed to Linux instead of FreeBSD, but maybe with linux emu and a little bit of luck I can get their products running on my FreeBSD box as well.
Hmmm. Happy days ahead.
The most salient question, of course, is how the binaries produced by gcc compare to those produced by bcc in terms of speed. Does anyone have any figures?
Further, it would be nice to know what switches were used with each compiler. Any compiler should be able to beat gcc -O6 in compile time.
Any word on porting visibroker/c++ ? This would be the next to last step in fully replicating my company's standard solaris environment!
:-/
So far, they seem much more interested in convincing us to (a) switch to NT and use their builder products for visibroker devlopment or (b) switch all development to java and use their builder products for development.
FWIW, I think bcc is a Borland trademark. If it isn't, I'd bet Borland will assign a different name to the compiler. What they showed at the conference was proof that their compiler works under Linux...not what the untimate marketed package will be called.
gut tells me that Borland doesn't want to piss of the Linux folks, but rather complement what they already use and give them better tools when possible.
I don't know if the folks at Borland realised this, but 'bcc' is the name of a 16-bit compiler for linux. Check out your local Debian package catalogue and you'll find it.
Jeff
-- "'It was horrible' recalls former child" - Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head
I even want to pay MORE for delphi under linux as I pay for the windows version.
if it can do anything it is able to do under windows.
WHAT IS "CTRL+V"? MY AOL DOESN'T HAVE THAT PROGRAM
OK, I JUST SPOKE WITH MY AOL CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE. HE TOLD ME TO "SETTLE DOWN DUDE" AND TO "JUST RELAX". HE ASSURED ME THAT AOL HAD THE "CTRL V" PROGRAM AND I COULD USE IT WITH NO EXTRA CHARGE. THIS IS TRUE. JUST WAIT. I PREDICT THAT THE NEXT VERSION OF MICROSOFT'S WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM WILL BUNDLED THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY, "CTRL V". COMPANIES LIKE AOL INVEST MONEY AND BRAINPOWER TO CREATE INNOVATIVE PROGRAMS LIKE THE "CTRL V" PROGRAM. MICROSOFT STEALS THESE INNOVATIONS AND BLOCKS THIRD-PARTY COMPETITION WITH ILLEGAL FEATURE BUNDLING. I PREDICT MICROSOFT'S WINDOWS 2000 WILL BUNDLED FULL "CTRL V" TECHNOLOGY. PAY ATTENTION DOJ!!!11111!
Hehe... He was so possessed that he couldn't keep the shift key down...
;)
The ability to copy an insane fascist ranting and hold down CTRL+V won't get you much respect around here, bugbear.......
Perhaps he belongs on cooksey.net/thndx.htm instead?
I think you can figure out how to email me
I think you can figure out how to email me
PGP Key:
Considering the ANSI C++ standard also fails to define standard static object creation, you probably don't want your libraries compiled by different compilers to link!