Thursday, August 12, 2010

Sneak Peeks of Delphi XE and C++Builder XE

So it's sneak peek time and there's lots to talk about. I'll post as much as I can over the next few days when I get a chance so things are probably gonna be posted sporadically like now where I'm between builds.

The first obvious thing is the name. Yeah, the name changed.

Oh, almost forgot, I'm also supposed to link to RAD Studio XE Preview and mention that I have been given permission to discuss or show new features of a pre-release version by Embarcadero Technologies.

So the features, because that's what everyone is interested in, right?

SVN version control is now integrated into the IDE. This really is more exciting that it sounds and here's why. ALL the source to it is public! If you use Tortoise or CallabNet then keep using them, just know that you can switch between them using whatever is the most useful. I still use use Tortoise and CallabNet, but I've started using the SVN IDE integration too.

Next we've got regular expressions. A lot of people are probably going to write about them.

There are a couple new RTL functions for creating symlinks that I'll talk about at a later time.

C++ had a major COM change. ATL was replaced by DAX which is pretty slick. You can still use ATL if you desire so more on this later.

COM registration now supports per user registration. I'll have a post on how this works later.

If you do COM then the Registered Type Libraries view is more useful than ever.

The DataSnap wizards have been given a huge facelift making them much easier to use.

That's all I got time for at the moment. Stay tuned for more.

7 comments:

Xepol said...

The regular expresions thing is handy, but I sincerely hope it extends to the IDE editor search and replace dialogs - that's where I really would love to see it (the old syntax is very unpowerful)

Joylon mentioned that Jedi had its own Subversion plug in support, and I've seen older versions of it as a seperate project (and been unimpressed with it). So far I am definitely liking the new IDE support a lot more than the JCL version (more user friendly to say the least) - the new SVN support didn't look like it supported advanced features like branching, but with source available, clearly it can be grown upon - so, nice! Looking forward to it.

Any thoughts as to whether those of us who sit at least part time in D2007 land will be able to back port the code, or does it use new OTA features only found in the XE version?

Chris Bensen said...

@Xepol - I honestly don't know how far the integration of regular expressions made it into the IDE. I know I used it for a few things.

The open source IDE plugin concept is an experiment and one that I hope continues.

Some new OTA interfaces were created to support version control but it may be possible to use something else. I didn't work on it so I don't know the details. The source should be posted any day now so you can have a look for yourself :)

André said...

About the version control API: how universal is it? Is it mostly a SVN implementation or a general/dynamic approach so other version control systems with other/extra capabilities are easy supported?

Because I made a (quick) Plastic Plugin for Delphi 2010 (http://code.google.com/p/plastic4delphi/) for the really cool Plastic SCM control system, and I found quite a lot differences regarding other implementations (e.g. the JCL VersionControl plugin is only useable for CVS or SVN like systems) so I had to completely write my own plugin.
I also tried the old MS Version Control API, but this one was also too limited and too different.

In other words: I have a bad experience with version control API's :-).

LDS said...

Has Datasnap improved beyond a proof of concept? In its current state it is unusable for any real application, until it has ways to protect data and calls *properly*

Chris Bensen said...

@LDS - The new DataSnap has improved encryption and authentication and a new authorization feature to control access to individual methods.

Chris Bensen said...

@André - The IDE manages two menu item, the diffing API and a few other things. The source is up so go check it out:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/radstudioverins/

André said...

@Chris: Thank you! Very nice this source code is already public!
I like this open attitude of Embarcadero (previews, code, etc).

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