I want to know what GUI toolkit they'll be using. I personally would like them to use Qt - maybe they could strike a deal w/the Trolls for a much reduced licensing cost, since many more developers would use Qt.

Then again, if the Qt commercial license was kept separate, having such a high quality tool available for free software would be a boon.

I don't see how you can say that this is bad for borland until we find out what they mean by "not a port of Delphi"..." but a new product".

They could still be doing it like we are and claim that it's a new product. If it's supposed to be easy to port your windows apps to Linux, then the plan must be to move the code over as close as possible. Remember, this isn't even started yet. They probably haven't even gotten everyone hired yet.

Shane

>> "Baeseman, Cliff" 09/28/99 08:58AM >>>

This is bad for borland. Developers are going to wan't delphi ported not a new product.

Cliff

True for vanilla Delphi applications that do not use
1) BDE
2) Win32 API calls.

However, Kylix is not a port of Delphi and CBuilder but a new product using entirely Linux standards and Linux components while incorporating the best features of the Borland Windows development tools."

This is strange. I spoke to Inprise R&D people and they WILL port Delphi to Linux ?

I have some information from Inprise R&D - which I'm not allowed to give you
- and it is _radically_ different from what the press releases say.

One more thing: Inprise people look from time to time at source code from other developers that develop code in Pascal to see if no-one copies their code. Just so you are not tempted :-)

Michael.

That's a good question, of course. I talked to more than one person in R&D and they at least were very coherent in their statements :)

In my opinion, marketing always needs to make a big fuss, in order to get clients/the market interested, it's their job, after all... So let's blame it on that =-)

However I guess if there is information from R&D as you indicate above then it appears that it will not be open source or why not announce it to the public?

I don't know anything about these legalese issues...

I remember that =-)

Michael.

My guess is the same IDE and the ability to load the forms, ignoring things that are not the same, kind of like loading a D4 project in D2. Windows API calls in user code will likely have to go.

Jeff.

So who is bull sh--ing who? Is the press release bull sh--ing the public or is R&D bull sh--ing you?

However I guess if there is information from R&D as you indicate above then it appears that it will not be open source or why not announce it to the public?

One more thing: Inprise people look from time to time at source code from other developers that develop code in Pascal to see if no-one copies their code. Just so you are not tempted :-)

I'm not surprised. This is something I worried about and warned about months ago. :-\

I disagree. Even though they are late, it will still be the first true RAD product on linux, with a very somewhat built in developer base. Additionaly, if the new VCL is C++/Java/Object Pascal neutral, I can see them making a _real_ killing on this.

I know I will buy it :).

GO BORLAND!!!

Semper Fi!
Chris Bordeman

I believe this is correct.

Michael.

I sometimes copy their code but always leave comments to say I did. The cause is the usual one of too many private functions in the VCL instead of protected; and some of it is alternate routines based on theirs but with bugfixes..

Sam

This is bad for borland. Developers are going to wan't delphi ported not a new product.

Cliff

As long as this is for your internal use then you can mangle the VCL all you wish. If it is source code you are distributing then you better look at the license agreement because that is a big no-no. You can't distribute any of the VCL code or any code that uses even a portion or modified part of the VCL.

Michael Van Canneyt el d�a Wed, 29 Sep 1999
17:47:43 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time), escribi�:

Michael, without breaking your NDA :) can you tell us if the product is more promising or less promising that the announcemment ? (even then I don't believe they will have it in middle 2000)

Sergio

Here is something very interesting. All along I have been saying that Lazarus might not be an exact port of Delphi due to some basic differences in the lower level coding design. Well it appears that even Inprises port of Delphi isn't a port of Delphi. Here is the link to the article. http://linuxtoday.com/stories/10476.html

They are making RAD tools for Linux but are not porting Delphi directly. It appears that Lazarus might be more of a port then Inprises.

This is a quote.

"According to Michael Swindell, Inprise group product manager for Linux, porting of applications developed on Delphi and CBuilder for Windows will be simple and straightforward.

However, Kylix is not a port of Delphi and CBuilder but a new product using entirely Linux standards and Linux components while incorporating the best features of the Borland Windows development tools."

Hmmm, seems they unified the back end compiler, now are trying to unify the front end also... not a bad idea, since today there's a lot common between languages like Object Pascal, C++ or Java, and a good cost-cutting and development time-cutting (for Inprise, at least).

Only trouble I see is port applications that use third party VCLs, it'll take some effort for the developper or some dollars getting a double-system upgrade...

About the same; just WHAT they promise to do is different. A vanilla Delphi app (database access excluded, I guess) would compile, so it seems to me; anything going deeper would be in problems.
Also the idea of initially just providing mysql support is ridiculous; One strength of Delphi is scalability; going from paradox to oracle with little changes is possible. In principle it can be done by changing the BDE alias or changing your TDataset descendent. Where is the scalability if you only support mysql ? (assuming that they ONLY support mysql)

AFAIK, R&D planned simply (sic) to port Delphi and as much as possible of the
VCL to Linux;

It should be obvious to anyone that starting something from scratch and get to the level of Delphi 5 (by then probably 6) in a time span of 1 year is an impossible task. Especially while still maintaining the win32 version. So you are forced to use the existing tool and port it as much as possible.

Here are some problems that the free-pascal team finds with that approach:

- Library on linux library on Win32
+ No guaranteed initialization on linux, so your host application MUST do the initialization - this will break a lot of existing code.
+ Memory handling is radically different.
- Messaging ? Will they change the language as we did ?
- Resource strings - no dlls.
- Debugger !! they use the win32 API debugger calls (just look at the imported Win32 DLL calls in Delphi and it's DLLs)
Going to stabs and ptrace calls will not be easy.
- Exceptions, they use win32 calls for it.
- Many, many win32 dependencies in the VCL.
- No Borland Database Engine. How to do database access ? (unless they port that also)
- No quickreport components, since these are too Win32 based. (I have modified the quickreport sources for my company, so I know the problems it would present)
- All winsock components gone - very tough job. The http and ftp components as well, they are based on win32 OCX's and dlls..
- Printing ? Everything must be done using postscript ! No win32 drivers...
- IDE : Very windows dependent. (Though built on top of VCL)
- Copy and paste, there is no clipboard...
- C++ libraries ?

And so on.

So there you have - part - of my analysis of the problems.

Michael.

Curtis White wrote

Do you think that Borland may try to use some of the Java code from JBuilder to create the IDE?

I don't think so. The IDE is written completely in Delphi, and is used both for C++Builder and Delphi, by using some defines and packages.

You forget the RTL & VCL: they'd still need porting to Linux.

Michael.

Do you think that Borland may try to use some of the Java code from JBuilder to create the IDE? If they did that, then most of the IDE work would already be done and they would just need to figure out a way to convert the VCL. As I understand it, most of JBuilder is already written in Java.

It would be really slow (probably), but it would be one way they could get this thing out the door by early next year. Why would they spend a bunch of time porting a ton of Windows specific code over to Linux when they already have most everything in the IDE done in Java already in JBuilder. And they have already released their JRE for Linux that is supposed to be pretty fast.

I bet they can already almost run the JBuilder IDE under Linux now. So if they could just make it run the Delphi compiler under Linux, then they would have it almost done already.

Just something to consider...

Curtis