Hi guys,

Just wanted to show you guys something. The new kid on the block is growing up very fast.... CrossVCL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lr_BQlXvkk

I believe the programmer is the ex-FMX (FireMonkey) developer that was let go by Embarcadero, and he is hitting back with a vengeance. The CrossVCL project has grown from nothing to something in an extremely short time. Coming from a toolkit designer myself, that is very impressive to see.

Regards,
Graeme

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Just wanted to show you guys something.

Great.

CrossVCL seems to allow to easily port Delphi VCL applications to Mac and Linux.

How to compare it against Lazarus ?

-Michael

Michael Schnell wrote

How to compare it against Lazarus ?

No idea - I've only been watching the CrossVCL videos as milestones get reached. I've never tried CrossVCL personally, and don't use Delphi personally either (since 2006).

Regards,
Graeme

Too bad that Eugene didn't decide to improve Lazarus Cocoa bindings :)

Ondrej

Ondrej Pokorny wrote

Too bad that Eugene didn't decide to improve Lazarus Cocoa bindings :)

Does he use fpc as a compiler ?

-Michael

Is there some technical info page "how it works"?

Does it require WINE or anything obscure, which makes installing apps difficult for the end user?

It says Win API, so as soon as I heard that I thought "WINE" but I have no idea :-)

Didn't you pull delphi out recently for some work you said?

Anyway, I'd like to know more technical details of how CrossVCL actually works... compared to how lazarus works.

Lazarus compiles native apps for each platform, whereas CrossVCL? May make the same mistakes as Kylix? Or not.

If anyone wants, this could be changed to Fpc-Other post, sorry if it's not on topic for Lazarus discussions. It could be related in that the architecture behind crossvcl could be studied for research and ideas could be used between it, but..

Lars wrote

Didn't you pull delphi out recently for some work you said?

I meant I don't use Delphi in my own company or for personal projects. But if I do contracting work for a client that already uses Delphi, then of course I need to use Delphi too (until I can convince them to move to Free Pascal <wink>).

Regards,
Graeme

Lars wrote

Does it require WINE or anything obscure, which makes installing apps difficult for the end user?

It doesn't use WINE as far as I know. As I understand it, it is similar to LCL in that the toolkit API implementation is very Windows API centric (obviously because VCL is). So they have implemented a "bridge" where Windows API calls are translated to native API's, no matter the platform - similar to what WINE does, but not actually using WINE.

There FAQ page explains in much better and in more detail:

http://www.crossvcl.com/faq.html

My issue with CrossVCL is that it requires Delphi 10.2 and the OSX add-on for Mac targets, or the Enterprise edition of Delphi to target Linux. That means a considerable expense! FPC and Lazarus is FREE and targets the same platforms or more. And personally I doubt I'll ever move back to closed source development tools.

Regards,
Graeme