Embarcadero is pleased to announce the release of RAD Studio 11 Alexandria Release 1, also known as RAD Studio 11.1, along with Delphi 11.1 and C++Builder 11.1.
The RAD Studio 11.1 Alexandria release enhances the great features introduced in RAD Studio 11, with a focus on usability, performance and stability improvements. It also includes some new functionality, including new database drivers. Additionally, the RAD Studio 11.1 release offers official support to operating systems released after 11.0 shipped: Windows 11, macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, and Android 12. Delphi also switches to a new debugger technology on some of the platforms.
In this blog post, we want to highlight some of the main new features and enhancements in RAD 11.1, covering the most relevant quality updates.
Table of Contents
IDE Improvements
The RAD Studio IDE is the primary focus of the 11.1 release, with the goal of rounding up the features introduced in recent versions:
- Extensive High DPI IDE quality, plus improved use of the IDE with Remote Desktop
- Improvements with High DPI designers for VCL and FireMonkey and the styled VCL form designer
- The new Welcome Page introduced in 11.0 now offers background images and supports adding custom frames with a new Open Tools API
- GetIt Library Manager enhancements with cached images and a reworked UI implementation (based on the VCL TControlList component)
There are also a few new IDE features:
- The Messages view uses different colors for compiler errors, messages, and hints to better highlights issues (the colors can be customized)
- The new Items dialog shows the available platforms for each item
- The Compile dialog shows the platform and build configuration used by the current compilation
Code Insight Across Delphi and C++Builder
Another significant quality focus area of RAD Studio 11.1 is Code Insight for both languages, Delphi and C++.
The C++ language Code Insight implementation, which is based on the Language Server Protocol architecture and cquery, was improved in terms of quality and performance. This is an area we are actively working on and for which we might release a new focused update soon.
The Delphi LSP engine saw big performance improvements, with most projects loading and updating error insight from 5 times to 30 times faster. Other changes include type parameters being shown when completing a class declaration, including T in a generic declaration, and showing set types.
Compilers and Debuggers
The Delphi and C++ compilers for the various platforms were improved in terms of stability and performance. The Delphi and C++Builder window compilers have additional support for ASLR, DEP/NX, and TSAWARE platform security settings, which are now enabled by default. The RAD Studio binaries and runtime packages are now built with these settings enabled.
Regarding debuggers, beside general quality work, the Delphi macOS 64-bit ARM debugger and the Delphi Android 64-bit debugger are now based on the LLDB debugger architecture, which was already in use for the Delphi iOS 64-bit debugger. The intent is to unify the Delphi debuggers on this technology, for most of the supported platforms, as a way to deliver increasingly better quality over time.
Moreover, the C++ STL and RTL improved their quality, including better Delphi RTL integration (for example, improving dynamic arrays with STL iterators).
RTL, UI, and Database Libraries
In the 11.1 Release the core Delphi RTL had several optimizations and quality improvements. There is also a new TURLStream class, a TStream descendant with support for async operations. The product added support for Window 11 and Server 2022 in the TOSVersion data structure.
The VCL quality work focused on recent features, like enhanced TTreeView, TRichEdit, TEdgeBrowser, TLabelledEdit and TNumberBox, flickering and DoubleBuffering, VCL High-DPI and scaling issues.
Additionally, we recently released via GetIt package manager a demo showing the use of the WinUI 3 library in Delphi, a further step in our support for the Windows App SDK (which already includes WebView 2 and MSIX). See WinUI 3 for more information.
FireMonkey quality work was centered primarily on TListView quality, improved Android SDK integration, TWebBrowser, Windows HighDPI-related issues, and performance
In terms of database libraries, FireDAC in 11.1 added Structure View integration and offers support for MariaDB 10.6, SQLite SEE, and Firebird 4 new data types. RAD Studio 11.1 also improved DataSnap quality and the ability to deploy a WebBroker application on Android.
Finally, regarding RAD Server, the new release of RAD Studio added SysAdmin endpoints including logs handling, backups management, and database validations, plus integrated deployment for RSLite
Quality
As mentioned, the RAD Studio 11.1 Alexandria release focused on quality, and that specifically includes customer reported issues and support escalations. This release provides quality improvements for over 650 publicly reported issues and customer feature requests. (Notice that QP synchronization is not immediate.)
There is More: AWS and Python
We also want to remind you that since the 11.0 release Embarcadero also made available to Enterprise and Architects customers the preview of a new AWS SDK for Delphi (licenced from Appercept): new releases are expected at a constant pace. Moreover, the company started offering free Delphi UI libraries to Python developers, along with promoting libraries to use Python in RAD Studio applications.
You can read more about AWS support at https://blogs.embarcadero.com/appercepts-new-aws-sdk-for-delphi-available-with-rad-studio-and-delphi-enterprise-and-architect/ and about Python integration at https://blogs.embarcadero.com/introduction-to-python-gui-development-with-delphi-for-python-vcl-fmx/
Ready to Go
Product trials for RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder 11 are now available and the updated product builds are live in the online store. Customers on Update Subscription can download and install RAD Studio 11 today using their existing license and will receive an email announcing the new release availability. Downloads are available for download in the new customers portal at https://my.embarcadero.com.
For more information, you can check:
- The What’s New in 11.1 Alexandria website page at https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/whats-new-in-11-alexandria
- The more detailed What’s New page in the DocWiki at https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/11_Alexandria_-_Release_1
- The list of customer reported issues addressed in RAD Studio 11.1 at https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/New_features_and_customer_reported_issues_fixed_in_RAD_Studio_11.1
- The RAD Studio feature matrix at www.embarcadero.com/docs/rad-studio-feature-matrix.pdf
- The updated RAD Studio 11 demos on GitHub at https://github.com/Embarcadero/RADStudio11Demos
Also, you can register for the RAD Studio 11.1 Alexandria launch webinar tomorrow, see https://blogs.embarcadero.com/whats-coming-in-rad-studio-join-the-upcoming-webinar/
We are very happy with the quality work our team did for RAD 11.1 and we are certain you’ll equally enjoy using this new version of RAD Studio, C++Builder, and Delphi.
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Will there be a community edition of Delphi 11(.1) anytime soon?
The plan is to have Community Edition releases a few versions behind.
I would like to know if to upgrade to version 11.1 from version 11, you have to uninstall it first or you can upgrade from the installer. thank you
Hi Charlie, the 11.1 installer will indeed automatically uninstall 11.0 first and then perform a full installation of any elements of 11.1 you choose to install. Due to the complexity of the options available and many interdependent modules it’s not currently possible to simply get 11.1 to perform a partial upgrading install.
You can make sure you say “no” to “also uninstall registry entries” when you perform the uninstall and when 11.1 is install a lot of your settings and preferences will be retained. You can also use the migration tool to save your old settings to a file which you can then import again after the install. You can read more about the migration tool here: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/Settings_Migration_Tool
Thank you very much for answering, but I have a question, I have quite a few components of TMS, and other companies installed, if I migrate the configuration as you comment in the link, will I keep them when updating? Or will I have to reinstall them? thank you
I think you will have to reinstall them. In the case of TMS you should be able to run the installer again and select the option to install the packages into the IDE. Personally, I use the TMS Subscription Manager tool and do it that way. For other components it may be a similar process but since the Delphi folders themselves are uninstalled I seem to remember that this means the component’s BPLs and so on are also removed but I could be wrong.
BTW one tip I do have is to install into a folder in the root I create called “c:\comps\” – this makes the path shorter plus it avoids problems with OneDrive which in the past has caused me issues with anything which gets installed into the Documents or similar folders. I’m never quite sure if OneDrive is a brilliant thing or the bane of my life! 😉
Thank you for the detailed and well written article. Will take note of this for future references. Keep writing!
Can you support Chromebook RAD development thru Android 12L when would be supported to have nice IDE and make PWA and Android applications for ChromeOs with c++ and pascal
You should be able to produce Android 12 apps now according to this article: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/developing-for-android-11-12-with-delphi-11-alexandria/. I have not directly tried releasing to a Chromebook as a target, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
With regard to the progressive web apps – there are several third-party solutions which can already help target PWA and similar packages for the web; for example, I have personally used TMS WEB Core with various recent versions of Delphi to create PWA apps and it worked just fine for me. TMS WEB Core link: https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmswebcoreintro.asp
Too bad ‘save all’ does not work anymore. Not good ‘quality’ in my opinion.
What happened to Konopka Signature VCL for Community Edition 10.4.2? I have a project which uses them in a previous Community Edition, but they are not to be found in GetIt! for 11.4.2
The Konopka Controls are a “Bonus Feature” for update subscription customers and not available for Community Edition. The library was released in the past by mistake. If you are interested in advanced features of Delphi, we recommend buying a regular license.
Congratulations on the release of RAD Studio 11 Alexandria! The enhancements in usability, performance, and stability are commendable. It’s great to see the addition of new functionality, including database drivers, and the official support for the latest operating systems. The IDE improvements, Code Insight enhancements, and improvements in compilers and debuggers make it an exciting update. The optimizations and quality improvements in the RTL, UI, and database libraries are also notable. Overall, it seems like a comprehensive release focused on addressing customer needs and improving overall quality. Well done!