Delphi Prism
Today we announced Delphi Prism — our next generation Delphi development tool for the .Net platform. We have licensed the RemObjects Oxygene technology to create Delphi Prism. Delphi Prism is platform, stack, and database neutral. You can write code for the CLR almost anywhere it exists, including Mono for Linux and the Mac. In addition, we are including heterogeneous database access via dbExpress for ADO.NET. We have a dbExpress-based implementation for the ASP.NET Provider.
Already there are a lot of links available:
- You can read the press release here.
- You probably have a lot of questions, so check out the FAQ.
- Here’s an interview with marc hoffman of RemObjects about Prism.
- We are at PDC — so if you are here, stop by our booth at #916
We are really excited about Delphi Prism — a new product for .Net developers. Keep an eye out for more information in the coming weeks on pricing, roadmap, and other information about the product. Do read the FAQs — there are a lot of good answers there.
Is ECO still part of the architect SKU?
October 27th, 2008 at 8:33 pmI am a bit lost in the wisdom of lack of continuity in all this. In the previous release, Codegear stopped supporting Winform development in Delphi.net (no designer). At that time, Codegear drummed up the support for VCL.Net touting the compatibility. So, anyone who wanted to develop in .net and winforms moved to VS. Now, we have Prism, with NO support for VCL.Net. The FAQ has one of the most ironic, hilarious and probably insane statement saying, if you want to continue development in VCL, migrate back to Delphi for Win32.
So, tell me why I should continue to trust Codegear for my development platform?
October 27th, 2008 at 10:35 pmWell, when you’re in intensive care they feed you oxygen - but you’d need far deeper surgery
October 28th, 2008 at 12:19 am2 Salim Nair: VCL.net was a mistake made by Borland. It is apparent now. CodeGear now tries to do away with this heavy inheritance. IMHO, licensing Oxygene is the best way to do this.
CodeGear makes correct moves, as far as I can understand.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:21 amI just read the FAQ more carefully… do you mean that RAD 2009 will include both the Galileo IDE and the VS IDE?
Or will Prims be integrated with Galileo too? That looks to be the less "integrated" RAD release ever, if it is made up of two different IDEs! Why don’t you throw in Eclipse too? You can sell it as "RAD 2009, an IDE for every opportunity!"
October 28th, 2008 at 12:40 amWell, the company name changed, people and mistakes didn’t. You just confirmed that using any CodeGear tool to develop .NET applications is a suicide because there is never a clear plan, one day VCL.Net, the other WinForms/WPF, tomorrow? Where the Microsoft thunderstorm will hurl you?
Hope the rumours about delaying x64 support in favour of some "parallel" features are just rumours, because soon even desktop home user will switch to 64 bit (and one driver are video cards too, too much memory on board that doesn’t fit in the 32 bit address space model used by Windows). Hope you won’t miss another opportunity, or you should name yourself "IdleGear".
What we need:
Documentation
Papers
Step by step tutorials
Books
Examples
Documentation
Papers
Step by step tutorials
Books
Examples
Documentation
Papers
Step by step tutorials
Books
Examples
Documentation
Papers
Step by step tutorials
Books
Examples
Not in C#, not in VB, Pascal only
Thank you
October 28th, 2008 at 1:49 amCodegear is now really really in focus.
Delphi/C++ 2009 is a fantastic work and the movement of delphi prism to visual studio is fantastic strategical movement which will save a lot of money reinventing the whell every year.
Regards
October 28th, 2008 at 2:23 am"…development tool for the .Net platform."
"Delphi Prism is platform, … neutral."
Besides that all is fine.
Congratulations to CodeGear and RemObjects!
October 28th, 2008 at 3:08 am@ Ilse
Did you see the wiki? (One of the nicest I’ve ever came across!).
Read e.g. about nullable types here: http://prismwiki.codegear.com/wiki/Nullable_Types
(Wish, there was the same thing for plain old win32 Delphi…)
October 28th, 2008 at 5:38 amIMHO delphi.prism = delphi 8
Now we have two differnt syntax and (may be) two different ide ….
October 28th, 2008 at 6:05 amI think this is great news, really great news, and I congratulate both Remobjects and Codegear on this agreement. My only dissapointment is that I have SA on RAD Studio 2009 and I bought Oxygene 2 months ago… guess I have paid twice for the product
October 28th, 2008 at 9:46 amI maybe stupid or uninformed…
Does Prism REQUIRE VS?
Other than being able to make Mac/Linux programs and 3.5 .Net support; what are the REAL advantages to this?
Will it have DIFFERENT syntax than Delphi for Windows?
If I paid for my support will I get a free copy or this an extra charge?
I AM VERY confused by this, and WORRIED about this. This seems (but maybe I am stupid) an off the road map release….
October 28th, 2008 at 10:36 amBarton –
I’d suggest reading the FAQs — there are a lot of good answers there.
To answer your specific questions:
Yes, Prism requires VS.
There are any number of advantages, I can’t list them here, but check the website for more information.
It does have different, but very similar, syntax to Delphi for Win32.
If you have RAD Studio support, you will get this as part of your maintenance.
Nick
October 28th, 2008 at 10:41 amNick,
Will ECO be included?
Thanks
October 28th, 2008 at 10:52 amThe bad news are Prism has nothing to do with Delphi, only the Delphi name and some Pascal similarities. Just a rebranded Oxygen, good for RO, more sales for them (does Oxygen, sorry, Prism includes Interop facilities for DelphiPrism?).
The good news are CodeGear will not spend more money/time/effort on caching MS .Net, it’s RO job. So now they should focus on Delphi (I mean the real Delphi): Documentation, features, Galileo extensibility, multiplataform (not MONO of course), more DB oriented helpers (ala LINQ), strategy (how is CG trying to get new customers? the kids at schools?, soon Delphi will be only for veterans and finally we all will die at the end…)
Daniel
October 28th, 2008 at 12:59 pmWell, well well. I bust my gut convincing upper management that Delphi.Net is the way to go since Delphi 8 days and this is what I get for all my troubles.
Chrome, Oxygene is NOTHING like the Delphi compiler we’ve come to know and love, I have tried it.
The full impact of this announcement hasn’t yet sunk in…
Can you at least open source dccil … or offer to maintain it to some level. I’m nnot asking for much, just please don’t desert us like this. Please…
October 28th, 2008 at 3:37 pmHi Nick
This is very good news! I have looked a lot at chrome objects, but never bothered to purchase their product for 3 main reasons.
1. I have no guaranteed compatibility and continuity from Borland since I have WinForms.Net stuff in D2006
2. There is no ECO for Chrome
3. There is no VCL.Net so I cant migrate old Delphi apps over to .Net smoothly
This off course leads to some questions not in the FAQ.
1. Will you guys build migration tools to migrate my Winforms D2006 projects over to Prism?
2. Will we get ECO4 (or 5) support in Prism? Preferable Mono compatible?
3. When will fully native .Net VCL components be available? Or at least the most used?
Hope to hear from you. I am very excited about this new move! I am so much looking forward to the definitive release, hopefully with ECO support, so I can finally migrate away from the buggy D2006 designer.
Best
October 29th, 2008 at 3:59 amBart
"Certainly no more unstable than D7 was" ROTFL! Delphi 7 was *far more* stable than D2007 too. If I end a coding session without seeing an IDE exception I feel lucky. Lost of strange behaviours, like edits in the OI that refuses to edit, editor painting issues, even closing a couple of tabs quckly will lead to a "Index out of bounds" error. And when I am forced to open the type library editor I enter a world where quantum physics is much more deterministic.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:55 amTHERE IS NOT VCL.NET ???
i can’t porting big-old application.
i should use this only for small new applications ?
October 30th, 2008 at 6:55 amthen… why not use C# for small project ?
Congratulations!
This must have been a tough strategic decision (I am sure), but one that had to be made.
I do hope this means that the limited CodeGear development resources will now be concentrated on native-code compilation, and - in particular - the long-awaited 64-bit Delphi.
With the Delphi and C++ compilers, you guys are uniquely positioned to become the "kings of the native code", and I am glad to see you move in that direction, if I am reading the announcement correctly.
-AJW
October 30th, 2008 at 11:24 amAndrew –
You have hit the nail right on the head.
Nick
October 30th, 2008 at 11:26 amNick,
Does your comment mean that you are now concentrating on the x64 version of Delphi? Pretty please could you give us all some more information on your progress and plans for x64.
Thanks in advance, David.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pmC Johnson:
Thanks for your comments about x64. What you are saying is basically what the official CodeGear roadmap says for the Commodore release slated for mid 2009. For reference this is
"Following Tiburón, the main area of focus for consideration for the Commodore project is bringing 64-bit native development to Delphi, C++Builder, and the VCL. We plan on single-sourcing the RTL and VCL, meaning that existing projects can be compiled for the Win64 platform. In addition, it is planned that the IDE remain a Win32 application, but that it cross-compiles to Win64.
Features under consideration for Commodore:
* Full compiler, RTL, and VCL support for 64-bit native compilation
o An option in the IDE to compile an application either as a 32-bit or a 64-bit application"
This roadmap was last updated in April this year. What I’d love to hear though, is an update from Nick. Please Nick, it’s not too much to ask for you to update us all on your x64 plans and timescales.
As for nothing revolutionary aside being able to target x64, that sounds fantastic to me. Taking on other major tasks would just delay x64 which is long overdue.
I think it makes a lot of sense to avoid major IDE changes since that would just confuse the issue. There’s no obvious need to release and x64 version of the IDE and since they will need to release a Win32 version they might as well do that alone. Remember that Visual Studio is a 32 bit app which can target x64. Personally I will need to target Win32 and x64 from a single source and cross compiling is absolutely what I need. If CodeGear can deliver on their x64 roadmap then I’ll be ecstatic.
David.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:54 amOne thing after I’ve read the prism wiki language features:
Why not expanding Delphi language by most the prism language features? This would help a lot on focusing on one language on different platforms (in case of core units, not visual forms of course).
Like the "method" keyword instead of "function" and "procedure" (even though I don’t understand why they’ve changed it).
Dennis
November 19th, 2008 at 8:57 amD207 is incomparable with D7. just today fully patched 207 decided to truncate its settings file (EnvOptions.proj) to zero. more over, it failed with "few-sense" errors at subsequent launches. took a while to figure out. RAD tool should be made with classic development paradigm, not a RAD; users of professional tool are stupid and will not understand beauty of extreme programming (nor silenly eat output of it). ha, even managed to break Tools menu in 209(!!)
August 7th, 2009 at 4:06 am