Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 24th Feb 2012 17:53 UTC
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RE[4]: Look what we've done
by henderson101 on Tue 28th Feb 2012 21:34
in reply to "RE[3]: Look what we've done"
Even if you don't use the runtime packages the bpls are necessary for compilation, and in some cases, even with the source the migration may not be an easy task
I remember migrating Delphi 1 code (16-bit) to Delphi 2 (32-bit). So many hidden issues. Then some code went to Delphi 3 via Delphi 2 or from Delphi 1 (depending on how far te port was in progress.) that was even harder in some cases, as the Delphi 2 release sort of "hacked" around the conversion to 32-bit in some areas. And then there was the custome collection classes that had been ported to Delphi 1 from Borland Pascal 8 (the Delphi 1 beta, before is got renamed and dropped support for DOS.) mostly coded in inline Assembler. NOW THAT WAS A PORT!
Bottom line - it's total BS to claim Delphi is backwards compatible with little cost. It is not. Every port forward requires a complete recursive test and full regression testing. It literally costs 6 months+ on any sizeable product and is not feasible in many cases.
Our .Net 2 code still compiles in VS 2010 and runs fine. And our 1.1 assemblies still link and work as described. Try doing tat with a BPL from any prior version of Delphi... Or DCU. Yeah we still have to regression test, but as te code is compiling against the same target, it's pretty simple to do.




Member since:
2005-09-27
Even if you don't use the runtime packages the bpls are necessary for compilation, and in some cases, even with the source the migration may not be an easy task, first, with the migration to UTF-8 strings (and if you are using a component that is making calls to an external .dll made in c then good luck with that)
then with the migration to 64 bits integers.
I wish they would be better in this area, just allowing some degree of compatibility between releases.
Edited 2012-02-25 16:33 UTC