Looking forward to Delphi 2010

I just got the email from Embarcadero with the access code to get my copy of RAD Studio 2010.  Almost all of our products that are Delphi based are compiled with Delphi 2007, I’m looking forward to working with 2010 flavor of Delphi.  We do a lot of .NET development, but there is still a need for WIn32 code and Delphi has been a really good development platform for us. 

I’ve had a software assurance contract since Delphi 7.  I don’t jump to next compiler just to get the next compiler, but I do want the new version to be able to evaluate the new version and see if the benefits out weigh the cost of porting to that version.  We chose not to use Delphi 2009.  We had just completed a painful upgrade to Delphi 2006 from Delphi 5 the year before.  The Delphi 7 port was easy because it supported Delphi 2006 components, but Delphi 2009 would have been major undertaking.  We still face the same porting challenges with Delphi 2010, but I still want to evaluate it and that port/no port decision.

Of course the fun part is waiting for the 3rd party vendors to release their updated controls.  We use a fair number of 3rd party packages.  The biggest ones are DevExpress, ReportBuilder, and JEDI.  DevExpress already put out a notice that they are a few days away from a release that will support RAD Studio 2010.  I’ll be able to do a lot more testing with.  There is no new information from Digital Metaphors about an update to ReportBuilder, but I would expect it fairly soon.  The roadmap page for the JEDI VCL shows that they intend on supporting Delphi 2010, but only sometime in 2009.  My guess would be that any component pack that supports Delphi 2009 should be fairly easy to port to Delphi 2010.

We have a fair number of components that have been either abandoned by the developer or we chose to keep at a specific version.  Those components, I had ported to Delphi 2006/2007 back a few years ago.  Delphi 2009 was a big change and it will probably take more work, but it shouldn’t be that bad.  I may make the decision to drop some of the lesser used components and replace them with equivalent components from DevExpress or JEDI.  We use Abbrevia library that was open sourced by TurboPower when they exited the market.  It has a Delphi 2009 port, that should be an easy one to port to Delphi 2010.