Slashdot Mirror
Borland Delphi and CBuilder for Linux.
jelwell writes "Borland has announced Linux support for Delphi and CBuilder. The tools are scheduled for a mid-2000 release. I wonder if they plan on integrating their products with any window managers/distributions?" Infoworld has the story - which also says, "To seed interest in the Java-on-Linux movement, Inprise this week will provide a free, downloadable preview of the JBuilder just-in-time
compiler for Linux that supports many Java 2 Enterprise Edition specifications."
This news is near the best news I have ever heard for linux in a long time. I still hope Borland completely blows our minds and does something NOBODY expects.
This is definitely a chink in Microsoft's armor. One less reason to stay with Windows.
This is very cool, hopefully it will be as good as the Windows version or maybe even better.
All I can say is.. WOW. This will be SO nice. Finally, a relatively easy way for applications to run under *nix and Win32. Just a simple recompile..
I know, I know, GNU tools on Win32 work, but not in the graphical interface area. I've always stuck by Visual C++ for Win32 development, but this is DEFINATLY a good reason to check out borlands products..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
You know, Sun sure hasn't been that active in Java for Linux. Everything Sun has done so far just points to the fact that they do not practice what they preach. Sun is proprietary. Moreso than Apple, and almost as much as MS. Their write once, run anywhere technology has so many provisos that the promise has whithered. If Sun would truly open the technology, it'd take off like a shot. Unfortunately, it's a niche of a niche product. Sun has practically strangled its own baby.
Thanks Borland for allowing all the Visual-something developers to develop on Linux.
Delphi and C-Builder are product that allow a visual approach to programmation like Visual-Basic/C++/... without having to deal with MS and all their technology.
But don't forget that this is the first step. We need a free (like in speech) replacement for this kind of software too, we must gave time to Glade, KDevelop and the like to mature I think.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Nor a bad thing. It's just another piece of proprietary software that I'm not interested in running on my freedom platform. I hope you won't be seduced either.
Linux hasn't needed Borland since the day it became powerful enough to run GCC and serve as its own development platform.
Some of you are euphoric every time some commercial vendor offers a piece of ``support'' for Linux, because it means that the popularity of your favorite operating system is increasing. So you rejoice at the popularity increase even if you don't plan to use the newly ported product.
Some, like me, would use a freedom platform even if it wasn't popular, and would use freedom software even if it wasn't as good as a proprietary alternative in terms of convenience or performance or other measures. How about you?
Many of the company's other products, however, are produced using Delphi, which is currently only available for the Win* OSes. With the addition of an awesome programming language (Delphi), together with another cool development tool (C++ builder), linux has indeed taken a big step closer to world domination.
Why? Everything is a circle. Developers attract users, users attract developers. Eventually, you reach a critical mass, and the two groups will automatically begin attracting each other, even if the underlying product is shitty (ala windows). For OSes that have not reached this point, its critical that simple to use development tools are made available. If my past experiences with Borland are any indication, we are up for quite a treat.
Just a few things that came to mind. I
-- Slashdot sucks.
And you can download it for free from here
Its good news to see yet another company want to support a Linux product. However, I see two main problems with doing that for a compiler. I have my doubts that it would be an open-source compiler. This is a real company seeking real profits. So our ability to use this compiler as we will is going to be severly limited to what the designers think we should be using it for. Second, IMHO, CBuilder is not that great of a product. I have been trying to use CB4-Standard for my class work this semester and it has the most counter-intuitive interface that I have had the pleasure of getting fustrated at outside of any M$ product on the market. More often than not, the "reqirements" for CB4 to make and run my program get in the way of the actual design of what I want. It is not for the faint of heart users.
I'm so happy for the coming release of Delphi and C++ Builder for Linux. But I don't understand why Imprise take JBuilder for Linux as more important.
If Java is really "Write Once, Run Anywhere", it is not so urgent for Java Programmer to write java under Linux.
What linux is really lack of, is the RAD tools, especailly for in-house development. If we want the company replace all the win9x inside the Desktop, Delphi or C++ Builder should release first.
Delphi with GTK widgets would kick ass. Plus it's theme-able :-).
It's obviously not going to have a GPL licence. I want open software development software to write open software.
Yes! Finally a real graphical, component based RAD environment for Linux. Ideally I'd like this to have come about as a OSS project, but alas it may be too large for a small development group to produce something useable sometime soon. Don't get me wrong; KDevelop is extremely good as an IDE but it's not particulary RAD yet. If you have tried Delphi or C++Builder on Win32, you know what I mean. I'd like to focus on application development, not wrestling with the placing of buttons and edit boxes by complex geometry handlers or other layout witchery.
This will get a sh*tload of windows heads
;-)
on the linux train, especially in the developer
community.
With so many apps you're inquring on the the
status of a Linux port you get the std. answer
"yeah well, it's all point and click delphi
doh" that this should really bring a host of
new apps to Linux.
Nice work Borland / Inprise, now make it fast
and bug free and off you go. The penguin is
unstoppable, and I cannot help smiling.
Uwe
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
If there is a way that I can use it to write
free software I am interested. If you need a copy of Delphi to compile it the resulting code is not
free software. Maybe they can offer a runtime lib as free software so you can't use the real nice desing tools without paying for them, but anyone can re-compile apps.
On the other hand for "In House" apps it will be nice.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
You may not want to trade your liberty for a good software but they are a lot of people that are bound to closed software right now. This is the first step to allow them to expand their view to free software as well.
To paraphrase RMS, it is better to have closed applications on a free OS than free applications on a closed OS. With Linux (and *BSD) we control the foundations to build free applications on and these are strong foundations. RMS did the right thing by beginning to create a free OS rather than free applications
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
... i would release their compilers free (source or no source) and charge for their IDE. I hope they port their Java2 VM. Linux needs one badly and Blackdown seems to be moving very slow.
Maybe it's easier?
I seem to recall that a large chunk of JBuilder (something like 80%) is already written in Java. Which would make the porting to Linux alot faster than other more Win32 specific products.
Shrug.
It's great we are getting some great new tools, Delphi will be a great addition. Still, a JIT for Blackdown's 1.2 JVM is only a start. What we really need to complete java for linux, is a much faster JVM then blackdown's current implementation. I have my fingers crossed that IBM's JVM will be released soon.
C++ Builder under Gtk would be rather silly.
If you call major comercial vendor support for Linux Good News(tm), then this is it. Not only is it good for the platform as a whole, but it will also mean that thousands of delphi windoze apps will be easy to port to linux. (Borland need to recode the Delphi VCL for X). The problem with this is that not only will Delphi be proprietry, but also most of the ported programs (or all, depending on Borland licencing terms, which may permit created software from being GPLed). This is most definitely bad news. The bottom line is that although Delphi is nice, if it isn't Free Software then it isn't good for linux.
Delphi or GCC, if you have a licence to run the compiler then YOU can decide what is the licence of your programs... there's no problem making free software with Delphi (which doesn't require any specific runtimes BTW)
Looking at the timeline I bet this is what they support.
I assume you know all about IBM's VisualAge for Java preview edition.
Will this force Qt to lower the price for the Windows version of their library? Right now, Qt is really the only slick and modern compiled (i.e. besides Java) widget library that runs on both Windows and Linux, so they can charge a lot for it (> $1000 for the Windows version -- of course the [LU]inux version is free). But Delphi/C++ Builder on Windows goes for $99 - $400 (depending on the flavor), and it's a lot more than just a widget library.
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
I really like the idea of being able to develop software with C++ Builder but also really like KDevelop which is free software. I hope both products get a large group of users.
Which it probably will. We will see tommorow.
Heh.
Slackware isn't an option until slack gets all the way to glibc. As for X, they'll probably include stuff for straight X, and wrappers for Gnome, KDE, and (why) Motif even. And I think that they are trying NOT to make it dependent on one distro, but make it guaranteed to run on ALL major distros (Caldera, Debian, Slack when it hits glibc, and yes, Redhat). That alone will give them a step above the Codewarrior tools, which only run and give support for Redhat based setups.
It is important to realize that Delphi is much different than Visual Basic. Delphi is pretty much identical to C++ Builder (actually CB is based on Delphi). Delphi does not use an interpreted language like most RAD tools do. It generates native code.
The major benefit to using Delphi is that you can just plop down a **very** nice gui and have it work with no bugs. That lets you focus on the guts of your project. I don't know how many times I've used a GUI app on Linux that does it's job well, but has a crash/core dump bug when you pull down the wrong menu and click in the wrong place.
Delphi being released Open Source? Never going to happen. If Borland is smart, they'll release a free (at least as in beer) command line compiler so that people can compile projects written in Delphi. If you take the open source away from linux, you have nothing. Therefore, if your development tool is too expensive to be used for open source projects, the project leads will stay away from it.
That's not what he meant. It's to obvious that you can decide how to licence your code. What he says is that code written in BCB can only be changed if you have the right compiler (especially with the language extensions they need). Therefore, you can release the code for free but nobody can recompile it without the proper compiler (for which they would have to pay). His suggestion is nice though: seperate the compiler and the IDE. It's the IDE that everybody wants (RAD) and the compiler is actually secondary, so make it binary and free (in the sense of gratis).
Personally, I loved developing in Delphi & Builder. Much, much better than X, much better than MFC.
But who the hell put a guy named "Swindell" in PR!?!? Come On! Is this some kind of joke?
Maybe I should buy my hardware from Mr. "Cheatum", too. Or his native-american counterpart, "He-Who-Sells-Things-That-Emit-Foul-Odors-And-Noxi ous-Smoke".
I wonder if they'll offer upgrades to people using the older (Brand M) version. Not just because it would be nice to get some benefit from the shelfware that we bought from them, but because the statistics will be VERY enlightening.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
From what I gather about Borland, they don't seem stupid. Due to the nature of the VCL from Delphi for Windows, They probably have VCL Packages for BOTH (GTK and KDE) and probably will have some (special order maybe?) for other "Commercial Window Managers". So you could have your GTK widgets, your KDE widgets, and your Motif widgets at any time.
Many of you don't like Delphi for Linux because it'll probably be commercial and closed source. You are totally free to have that opinion but how about putting your programming where your mouth is and contributing to the Lazarus project?
Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi. They are also making and IDE. So check what you could do.
I only *hope*, rather than demand, that people choose not to give up freedom for whatever advantage they hope to gain.
;)
By the way, why is it that your customers depend on you and on Inprise to provide the freedom to choose between NT and Linux? If you didn't provide the choice, could they go to someone else? Some freedom they have there.
Who care's. We don't need this crap anyway.
I personally don't. It sure as hell doesn't matter
if linux is "ready for the enterprise" or any of
this crap. It's the software that matters. Writing
good free(as in speech) code. If you don't want to
work for a place that uses proprietary software,
DON'T!!!
BTW this wasn't really directed at anyone in
particular.
Sheesh. Noone's forcing you to write C++ with Borland's product. Use a GPL C++ compiler if you want.
But for those of us trying to leverage Linux into the workplace, this is the best thing since english muffins.
Will in Seattle
I tend to think that programmers, for the good of all programmers, should stick to 100% open tools built using GPL'ed tools and libraries because I believe in and hope for an evolution of programming into a true profession like medicince and law where all the code (laws, medical techniques) is (are) open and more or less freely available and it is skilled people who are valuable. Software is only valuable as a product because compilation is, in effect, encryption that hides technique. It makes programmers into manufacturers, wholly dependent on their salaries from companies owned by people who can't code at all. In a world where software is difficult and expensive to distribute, this was natural (and perfectly okay in my book -- I'm not a socialist).
We are now, however, moving into a world where software is easy and almost free to distribute. The software "industry" is no longer economically necessary. In fact, I think its a dinosaur. An antique. I truly believe that we will all be more productive (and rich) when all software is free because programmers will become people valued for their skill and productivity alone. We will all be able to use one another's knowledge (just as doctors and lawyers do now) so we can spend less time doing the same things over and over again. The pace of programming innovation will accelerate dramatically and the economic benefits of computing (faster business cycles and lower costs) will be magnified by that amount of time we no longer spend building the same basics at every employer and we instead concentrate on making existing software fit the local need.
All of that said, that is not yet the world we live in. While I want us all to be using open tools, a lot of businesses have a heavy investment in specific "enterprise" technologies such as Delphi and C++ Builder. I for one welcome these tools on the Linux platform. I'll prbably use them in my workplace.
The software I develop for the open source world will still use the GNU tools and be GPL'ed and use automake/autoconf and be written for maximum portability.
I also look forward to seeing tools like Kdevelop continue to mature.
While the software industry lives, let the commercial vendors come. Just try to keep your skills up in the open tools too.
This is what makes free software unstoppable. The commercial interests can take over the business market through the gullibility of the PHBs, but no one can take away your gcc, or stop you from giving away your own code.
I believe all software will one day be free and that it will be considered fiduciary misconduct to buy an operating system, but until that day, there really is room enough for us all.
This is a great announcement. Borland's tools are great, and in a cross-platform development house like ours, it'll be great to eventually have people on multiple platforms using at least some of the same tools (if only we could get Solaris versions). People here who are familiar with Windows environments only may be convinced to move over to Linux as more tools *they are already familiar with* get ported to Linux. This is a Good Thing (tm).
If we could move 50% or more of our developers to Linux or Solaris, I'd be very happy. I'd like to see managers like myself be able to make the transition also. Such a transition, though, would require the availability of necessary evil tools such as project management software available on UNIX/Linux (and with the same level of functionality as, say, Microsoft Project and Rational Requisite Pro).
Whether or not these tools are open source is irrelevant to my bosses, who are making business decisions, not community outreach decisions. Our technical department actually does support Open Source software, but we also know that when a job needs to be done, if the best tool is not open source, then get the closed source tool...
What really matters is not the licensing model of the tools, but their availability on the platform. Businesses are used to having to decide whether or not to accept stupid licensing terms, but they like to have the right tools to choose from. Lots of developers use Delphi on Windows, and if they use it on Linux, also, that is good for Linux, whether or not their software is open source.
It would be nice if all software could be open source, but that is not the reality of our current marketplace, and so if Linux wants to continue to expand its user base, this is indeed good news.
Maybe Borland/Inprise will even change some of their licensing to allow free software developers to redistribute Borland runtimes libraries with freely redistributable software, and to allow open source distribution of code generated using their code generation tools. Incidentally, Frameworks generated by, say, C++ builder, should already be open sourcable since a developer will add and modify it enough to create most programs to make the copyright their own - though I haven't looked into the fine print on the Borland/Inprise licenses in the last 5 years...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Since when? IIRC it wasn't in version 3. Not that I'd object or anything, though IMHO OWL's not that much better than MFC (which is baaaaad). The VCL, however, is very nice. And it's abstract enough that they might possibly be able to get away with wrapping it around GTK and allowing just-a-simple-recompile porting. I'll believe that when I see it, though.
I hope to God they steer clear of WINE, though.
Anyone willing to place a bet that someone will start a project called "Gylix"?
No, it was because MSFT settled out of court after stealing all of Borland's developers/engineers. It was cheaper to "invest" $100 million in Preferred Stock. And Preferred Stock that is non-voting at that.
Will in Seattle
That is an interesting point. The next logical step would be a free compiler and libraries to support these apps. Free Pascal seems like step in that direction.
Inprise is going to apply their programming standards on Linux. OK, let's see what's in the basket.
1. They have some experience with freeware/open source. Delphi comes with VCL source and
there's InterBase 4 for Linux free (closed source).
2. Inprise is in so dramatically bad financial shape that they sold to M$- their only competition under Muzzdie.
3. D4 is full of bugs. Every complicated piece of software has them, but they weren't in D3
4. Since D1 Inprise didn't manage to create any new component suite. Most things are 3rd party. InterBase Express,
so much hyped, is based on FIB- _free_ IB API library.
This is good news for enterprises that have big code base in Delphi and those unable to turn to C, FPC, perl, python, whetever. Study or pay.
That's it. And of course, no one can force people to give up gcc and pay for Kynix (what that should mean?)
(For AC fast to flame poor little ladies- I'm with Borland Pascal since '90 and I do have freeware. In Delphi. How 'bout you son?)
KuroiNeko
Kylix.
Sounds to me like it's KDE-only. (I could be wrong, though.)
James
It's well thought out, friendly to use, and powerful. It doesn't have "you can't get there from here" sort of feel of VB when you try to do something complex. And if I recall correctly, also unlike VB the visual side builds actual code, and you can get everything about the design just from reading the code, no need to dig through property settings if you don't want to.
libc5 is no longer being maintained, and has not been for several years.
Opensource is winning.
We will first win in operating systems.
Then office suites, then stupid RAD programs for morons who can't program.
Hop on the bandwagon before it is too late.
About a year ago (I belive..) GTK+ was ported to Win32 for the purpose of being able to have a Win32 GIMP (Which works and is out there as well, minus scriptfu). With the addition of GLib, it would be pretty easy to write code to go from Unix->Win with relative ease, as long as you dont use system specific things (/dev stuff, kernel calls, you get the idea). If you look on www.gtk.org I'm more than certain you can find it. BTW, GTK+ is a _breeze_ to code for, simple and logical, and MFC coders usually dont have much of a problem stepping over..
Well la-dee-da. Jacoplane doesn't need XYZ program. What on Earth is Inprise/Borland doing making these programs then?? Aren't they aware that Jacoplane won't be purchasing them?? Time to sell off all the Inprise stock, as obviously they are complete morons doing something without asking Jacoplane first. Sheesh...
Guess what, until Open Source wins, people still have other work to do! Show me open source tools that perform their tasks *as well as or better than* their closed source counterparts and I'll choose the open source tools every time...
Otherwise, if we can't get our jobs done with the tools, open source loses...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Ummm, builder has a counter-intuitive interface? Just a sec here, i truly mean no offense here, but what DO you consider intuitive?
...)
... :-) I was using all sorts of obscure crap too, serial drivers, custom (unisys poll/select woohoo!) serial protocol stacks, interface to a custom RT kernel, custom drivers for high speed DAQ boards, opengl, directx, lots of really messy crap.
...) but I would really hesitate to call it counter intuitive.
...
I would really like to know what you mean by "More often than not, the "reqirements" for CB4 to make and run my program get in the way of the actual design of what I want."
I used builder to make the win32 gui front end for a real time product. I had written the original app in VC++ and it was, quite frankly, a bitch to create and maintain. I downloaded the BCB demo from borland and recreated my entire product front end (a week of work in vc++) in a day. (granted I reused a LOT of code that wasn't gui related
I don't recall that builder ever got in my way. (this was a couple of years ago, and I've slept a few times since
As far as the GUI goes, it's not the greatest (I like tornado, but its in a different world i guess
I really would like to here from you on this one
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Sorry, but the "libc5 is not maintained" argument looses ALL it's steam when you add the oft ignored "because it's stable and COMPLETE" qualifier.
I dont have any "freedom" attitude and I use Linux. Linux can live without GNU. If it didnt exist then we would make our own software. As for compilers, im pretty sure there would be other methods of GCC to compile the OS tool/kernel. If you dont like comercial software dont use it!
accept the fact that there is a set of developers and development projects for which open source is completely irrelevant, and an easy to use stable, user friendly IDE IS relevant.
I just spent all weekend using GCC and emacs and purify and gdb and the fact is it SUCKS compared to using an good IDE. Do I care if its open source? No, because I dont plan changing it anyway.
so shut up, your going to still have your open source GCC, giving us normal people a good idea and compiler isnt going to take away your little unix toys. so shut up.
jeeeeeeeeez
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
I hope Borland will use the opportunity of a new platform to bring the runtime library of Delphi into a new structure - it's a horrible mess.
A thin layer around Win32 API functions that has most things you need, but you won't find it. Date / time functions, string functions, file search, everything in SysUtils. The Windows.pas source code files is larger than 1 MB and has everything from drive type detection to thread synchronization.
Probably they will not do it because they want people to be able to compile their projects without changes. Sigh...
In the old days we had DOS and the developing was mostly done using Assembler or, later on, low level languages like C, Pascal, etc. This resulted in some very good software being developed. However, a lot of people (companies?) who developed software on a commercial basis also needed to shorten the needed development time as much as they could. Time, after all, is money commercially speaken.
This whole new development led to a situation in which 'high level' development environments were introduced. Unfortunatly this wasn't only shortening development time for the clued developers. It also gave a tool to the clueless developer "want to be's". The result is well known IMHO. Just take a look at the buttload of software which was coming out for Windows 3.x. One software package very often even worse then the other.
Besides these 'weird' programs the programs also tended to get bigger. Enourmous libraries, with many functions, were getting linked to programs even if the author only used 1 single option in the library itself. Basicly a lot of the software got bigger & slower which was somehow compisated with the hardware which was getting faster & faster. However; it still resulted in a lot of programmers who commited themself 100% to some programming environment which did a lot of the 'standard' work for them. A bug in this development environment also meant a bug in their program. Given the fact that most Linux (system) programs get installed as root one can only imagine what havoc some bugs in such a development environment can cause.
Open source? guess not. Sure, one can include the Delphi source code but can someone also tell me what this Delphi release -really- puts into the binary?
Its a personaly opinion, sounds normal to me, but I would not be surprised if the speed advantage which Linux currently holds drops a few months after the 'high level' development environments will be commonly used among the clued & clueless. Besides this I'm also afraid that the open source concept will be in a rough time. Like I said; Delphi source != open source IMVHO.
There are many Delphi and CBuilder developers out there (only a margin compared to visual studio ;)).
I really should have learnt Delphi. doh.
I agree, Until then Jed will have to do.
Winning what? Open source isn't winning anything, many of then companies making software on linux, Loki, Oracle, Lotus, just to name a few havent made there products open source. Loki did release some MPEG tools into opensource but not the games.
..so I'll try to reply to this flammage.
Borland's IDEs were wonderful in the days of DOS and MacOS. You see, DOS only allowed you to run a single program at a time and required sick hacks for one program to debug another; worse, there were no seditors that knew about programming languages. What did this mean? Well, writing programs without an IDE would require:
-> Writing the code in a text editor with little or no support for sane indentation
-> Compiling the code
-> Linking the code
-> Running the program
and, if bugs were around:
-> Starting a debugger
-> (hopefully) Finding the bug, noting where it was
-> Restarting the text editor..
-- in other words, you had to stop doing one thing each time you wanted to do anything else. The IDE meant that you didn't have to worry about this -- programs could be compiled and debugged from inside the debugger.
On a UNIX system, on the other hand, we have a thing called 'multitasking'. This means that leaving the editor to compile is no longer necessary -- in fact, the editor can start a separate program to do the compiling (as opposed to having the compiler and make system stuffed into it) Just about every editor knows about programming languages -- generally better, in fact, than "IDE"s that I've used.
SO -- IDEs are, for me, irrelevant. But you know what? I'm going to refrain from yelling that "IDEs SUCK" or telling you "so shut up" because us "normal people" having a "good idea and editor" isn't going to "take away your little windows toys". Because I figure that it's not hurting me if you feel like using an IDE.
As they say,
jeeeeeeeeeeeeeez
Daniel
I remember the poll that Bourland created a while ago . I voted that I NEEDED an IDE ( for an assortment of tasks ) and that I needed an IDE that could use underlying cmopiler technologies already available freely .
If I can't write source code that can be compiled by the GCC ( or EGCS , whatever ) then this tool is useless to me . It also makes interedepartment developement difficult when there are a variety of compilers used .
I can't believe that Bourland would expect to be well received by the Linux community if they release an IDE dependent on a specific closed source and proprietary compiler .
I do truly hope that Delphi can be used to develop without making it a required component of the end users compiler . It is , afterall a good technology .
Your Squire
Squireson
squireson@bigfoot.com
I still wanna know if they are going to support PowerPC based Linux...
--
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
Jikes 1.1.8 just relesed. It's supposed to rock; although, I've yet to try it myself. Maybe 1.2 will be out soon.
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
Have you tried DDD? I don't know how well it does Java, but I like it for C and C++, which is what I've used it for so far, and it does have support for jdb.
Delphi has a great set of tools for building applications, but the BDE is buggy as hell.
While past versions of the BDE have been buggier then Maine in June, the more recent versions have been much better. I haven't had any problems with BDE 5.0 stuff (Delphi/Builder V4).
It's the main reason my company switched over to C++.
The BDE (Borland Database Engine, for those who do not know) is a library. It does not depend on the language or compiler you are using. Delphi or C++Builder, they both use the same library.
If you meant you switched to MS Visual C++ and DAO, well, fine, but say so. (Even if the thought of switching to DAO to get away from buggy databases is rather amusing to me. )
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
1. a shallow, two-handled drinking cup of ancient Greece, set upon a stem terminating in a foot. Often <cylix.>
Borland/Inprise has a thing about using Greek code names for their betas, such as "Calypso" (Delphi 3), "Allegro" (Delphi 4.02), and "Delphi", which was the code name for Delphi 1.0, a name which people liked so much that Borland stuck to it for the release.
In this case, I very much doubt it has any connection with the KDE. Speculation is tenuous at this point.
Do you think they are seriously going to spend the resources to support both? Of course not. They will support KDE.
First KDevelop, now this. It doesn't really matter now.
This really kicks! I have been using KDE ever since I first installed Suse and I *love* it. It will be great to have this in addition to KDevelop to learn GUI coding :)
Linux can live without GNU.
/bin/* /lib/libc.*'
su -c 'rm -f
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I wonder if RMS knows that Emacs isn't an OS? Maybe *that's* why the Hurd kernel took so long to develop...
;)
:)
However, come on, with XEmacs, you only have one app to support! It's a development platform, a text editor, a news reader, a web browser...
In related news, I'm glad Borland is porting their compiler, now gcc/g++ will have some decent competition, and everyone will get to port their Borland apps more easily. Of course, it'd be nicer if people could just use Wine to port their Windows apps, but Wine isn't really there yet. Maybe by the time they release this, it will be.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Back in my Amiga days Down Unda', I remember this guy from New Zealand created a Mac emulator for the Amiga--I forget its name--from scratch. He first made himself a rudimentary 68k assembler--how beats me--then I believe he created a C compiler with that. Although he could have written the emulator in assembler directly. Anyway, point being, the guy bootstrapped himself from nothing to a very nice Mac emulator indeed.
The entire concept of RAD has been completely debased since Delphi, as far as I'm concerned. It used to mean: first prototype your app in a toy tool, click its buttons and try it out to see if it feels ok, then throw it away and code it in a real tool. Well, Delphi has made those real tools pretty much redundant. My current company, and the company before that one, and the one before that one, make a damn good living creating vertical Delphi apps which are sold as is. "Going back" and doing them in C++ would be a waste of time. Back in the days before the MFC itself created bloatware, maybe. Nowadays, its code size and speed advantage--if any--are academic.
Sun will be the official maintainer of the linux JDK. Wait for 1.3 (maybe even 1.2.2 before) next March. I don't understand why borland is investing in a JIT on a non-production JDK with 2 major VM bugs! Do they have their own linux JDK?
Wasn't Inprise bought out by M$ a while back? If so, I'm confused...
...the BDE is buggy as hell...
:-)
While past versions of the BDE have been rather unstable, newer releases are much better. I had no problems at all with BDE V5 (Delphi/Builder V4).
It's the main reason my company switched over to C++.
The BDE (Borland Database Engine, for those who don't know) is a library. It is independent of language and compiler. Object Pascal or C++, it does not matter.
Now, if you mean that your company switched to MS Visual C++ and DAO, fine, but say so. (Although I find the idea of switch to DAO to avoid bugs hilarious.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
One can imagine a future where a free software platform of Linux, KDE and/or Gnome, KOffice, etc. could actually be considered a competitive business desktop to Windows/Office for $500 cheaper. The big hitch is the inevitable in-house corporate applications written with VisualBasic, Delphi, VC, DBase, Lotus Notes, etc. Wine might be an answer, but obviously, the Delphi people are now in the best position to save some money on desktop software when the time comes.
Products like this, while not "free" are a critical piece of the free softwar puzzle simply because they open the door for migration.
Furthermore, my guess is that Linux support will appeal enough to IT managers that this move will increase Borland's Windows product sales, just so shops can hedge their long term bets against a Windows desktop.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I really can't believe you people. Here is a small scenario.... Microsoft needs competition for it's upcoming trial. They own part of Boreland (Inprise), now they say "Look Mr. Judge... We have competition. Linux has Borland IDE's. The Fact that Microsoft owns a small portion of it will not be enough to go against this claim during the process of discovery. The judge says, "Ok you do have competition. Go away." Microsoft then influences Borland after the trial to drop Linux because it was "Not commercially feasible.." and they proceed to have a FUD fest... Double win for M$... M$ 2 Linux 0 Add up the numbers people and wise up...
A thin layer around Win32 API functions that has most things you need, but you won't find it.
:)
...everything in SysUtils.
The VCL is a bit more then a "thin layer"; see MFC for that. The VCL actually does pretty well as an abstraction of your typical GUI these days.
The second part of that sentence... doesn't make sense.
In C, everything is in one huge namespace. At least Object Pascal gives you a little bit of sanity. Ever look at how many files stdlib.h or unistd.h bring in? Tens of thousands of lines of source is not unheard of.
Object Pascal and Delphi's RTL isn't perfect, no. But then, no language/RTL is. Delphi and the VCL are quite workable, IMNSHO.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Maybe this means that now my high school will finally switch over to a Linux-based system. In our programming classes, we use Delphi and CBuilder (and JBuilder) exclusively. I'd love that, and I'm sure the tech guys would too; having networks go down for 3 days because they're Windows-based isn't fun.
You seem to be interested in developing on a completely free platform as an expression of idealism. Noble enough goal and I can see how Delphi wouldn't impress you.
Others are interested in the actual capturing of majority or total market share by open source software. This is a different goal, it tolerates the expediency of closed software for a later good or special circumstance, but still maintains open is always better when possible. For these folks, Delphi is expedient, get a lot of converts to an open OS now, replace Delphi with completely free tools later.
For some, open software fits some needs, closed software fits others. They may be strong Linux advocates, but they are neutrals in the proprietary/open source/free software war. These people may be looking forward to Delphi as a long term tool, or at least until something better for their purpose is written.
The Linux commercial interests are mostly closed/open/free agnostic, they need help for their bottom line now, and never mind how. They will be very pleased by Delphi for Linux, because it means they have a tool as good or better than VB for quick in-house programming by high level programmers. This covers a lot of business programming. This might help GM believe that their VB apps might port in reasonable time for example.
Then there is Microsoft, who will not be pleased at all. One of their biggest problems right now is loss of developers, and having Delphi and C++ Builder waiting will mean that developers can switch to Linux, or *BSD probably and be productive immediately thru RAD development.
I don't think of any of these being "wrong" just different approaches to meet different goals.
Personally, it's my belief that open software is a scaling phenomenon. It works better the more people are involved with it. Makes for more testing, shallower bugs, more new ideas, more developers working at once, more common software to draw on, and better ability to beg driver support for new hardware. So I'm in the camp that is wanting to expand open software's marketshare, even if it takes closed software to do it. When you've got positive feedback on your side, you need to take advantage of it, not hold back waiting. There are elements out there who are actively trying to shut down open software, or ridicule it into oblivion. Time matters, unfortunately.
If you take the open source away from linux, you have nothing.
Whoa! Is there no other reason to use linux besides being able to read the source code? I am relatively new to linux, but it has at least a couple of features that are actually useful, even if you had to pay for them and didn't get the source code.
You make some excellent points. Most leading experts in the OO field consider Java to be a terribly flawed programming language. For a comprehensive look at the shortcomings of Java, have a look at Professor Harold Thimbleby's famous Java Critique.
Is that real news or ur hope?
If sun had announced or intemated something like that, can you tell me where i can read it?
-- Y. J. Chun
-T
On the other hand I'm absolutely sure that Borland will screw it. Somehow.
So the question is: Are there some alive free projects of RAD tools for Unix? No interpreters or c/c++, pls.
-T
uuh loki *cant* release those games because they are not owned by them, they are just porting them. they will probably release source to civ: ctp in few years like id software is doing with doom
Why?!
I hope they won't! XLib and own widget drawing/handling is the way to go IMHO... VCL is a layer itself akin to QT.
Now we all see that everyone have different opinions and (quite probably) Borland tools for *X is not to be.
What is this? Good software (BTW, I'm guessing it's good, haven't looked at it myself) makes it to the Linux platform and you take it as a bad thing? Fine, just go and lock your self in your 'Free' ivory tower, while the rest of us can choose.
"Some, like me, would use a freedom platform even if it wasn't popular, and would use freedom software even if it wasn't as good as a proprietary alternative in terms of convenience or performance or other measures. How about you?"
"Freedom platform"? WTF? I think you are taking this Free Software (as in speech) thing way too seriously! I use both, I prefer free (beer,speech) software, but IF there is a better "proprietary" (has this word becoming a cursing?) software that I think is worth it, I pay for it. Please people, support Free Software, but let's not get carried away, there is room (and need) for both!
Jón
I would bet anything it generates KDE apps, and I doubt Inprise will be writing their own desktop enviroment just to support their Builder apps, which is what you are suggesting.
I think that's the plan ;-)
Any news on whether the C++ name mangling will be compatible with g++?
Otherwise we'll have to dual compile all our c++ libs (stdc++, Gtk--, Qt, KDE etc)
Alex
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
Don't the moderators keep up with their own site? This was big news about 2 months ago... Why post something so OLD?
I alluded to this elsewhere but let me ask straight out. What about COM?
A lot of Delphi applications make use of COM. Borland/Inprise has been providing more and more support for COM technologies (ActiveX, Automation etc) in Delphi.
A Delphi without COM won't really be Delphi. Is COM support available in Linux?
I occasionally see an app with the giveaway OWL "check" button.
:-)
Just FYI: Delphi's VCL includes a TBitBtn component that gives you those buttons-with-bitmaps as well.
Every time I see GNOME/GTK's buttons with the colored balls and such on them, I think of Delphi.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Okay, this post is partly off-topic for this sub-thread, but I wanted to get it in near the top of the discussion when sorting by Score.
Linux Today has more information about this, including:
This is not a port of Delphi or C++Builder, but rather, a completely new product.
Read the details about "Kylix" at Linux Today!
(I would post a complete copy, but that would be stealing from LT. Don't wanna do that.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Wait until the trial...then talk to me... youngsters....gotta love 'em...
Feel free to continue to keep your head in the sand, it's all the same to us.
What really matters is not the licensing model of the tools, but their availability on the platform. Businesses are used to having to decide whether or not to accept stupid licensing terms, but they like to have the right tools to choose from. Lots of developers use Delphi on Windows, and if they use it on Linux, also, that is good for Linux, whether or not their software is open source.
It would be nice if all software could be open source, but that is not the reality of our current marketplace, and so if Linux wants to continue to expand its user base, this is indeed good news.
Yes. "If Linux wants to continue to expand its user base". I don't think that link itself wants anything, as it is not intelligent being.
It is what it's users want, and there are quite a few different opinions on the subject. Not meaning to sound elitist, but personally, I do not think that it is "good for Linux to grow".
Because the more it grows, the more clueless newbies it will atract - and remember that for any number of users, system will be designed to use lowest common dominator. IOW, "Make a system that even an idiot can use, and only an idiot will use it."
YMMV.