What I'd Like to See in Delphi

I've mentioned this before, but I think this bears repeating, given that
Delphi probably has been given new legs by the buyout. Here is what I'd love
to see in Delphi, but have never seen it:

1) Backward compatibility between brand new IDEs and old versions of the
VCL. I've often had to work on projects that are in D7 or D5, and could not
be upgraded to a newer version of the VCL, but wanted to use the latest IDE
so I could get things like refactoring, etc.

2) Built-in profiler, that shows line by line timings right in the IDE
editor (like TurboPower's SleuthQA 3 used to).

3) Cross-platform compiles, for Win32, Linux, the Mac, Solaris, etc.

4) VCL updated to include:
a) Regular Expressions functions
b) XML parsing/serialization
c) threadsafe properties for GUI components (see the signals and slots
mechanism in Qt for an example of how to do this right)
d) automatic hotkeys in captions
e) PAR, PAR2, RAR, ZIP attachment decoding/recombining
f) HTML browser (like pBear's stuff)
g) skinning
h) Flash player
i) inter-process TAction descendent (you should be able to set an
TAction's property in one program and have it updated in another)

5) Ability to mix (fully compliant) C++ and Delphi files promiscuously in
the same project, with the compiler doing any housekeeping needed to let C++
see Delphi classes transparently and vice versa.

6) Method-parameter-aware run-time error logging. In other words, something
like EurekaLog, but able to do a dump of the actual parameter values passed
into a method when it crashed.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Delphi 2005 update 1 is out!
    ... Delphi 2005 Update 1 Fixes ... When importing an assembly if the types Pointer or Exception are used ... bdpDataAdapter can cause the IDE to lose all key stroke events until ... Using a remote data module may cause an Access Violation. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi Update one... are you serious?
    ... Delphi 2005 Update 1 Fixes ... When importing an assembly if the types Pointer or Exception are used ... bdpDataAdapter can cause the IDE to lose all key stroke events until ... Using a remote data module may cause an Access Violation. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Why arent you upgrading?
    ... Stable IDE - this is first and foremost before anything else. ... MS alternate choice - As I see it the reason Delphi became so ... better database support ... Then announce that 64-bit native compiler is in progress and started. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: So Long and Thanks for all the Fish!
    ... I think Borland and Delphi needs a .NET story of some kind, ... I'm not so sure the market is engrossed with .NET any more than it was ... The IDE is already very much a .NET IDE ... Refactoring and Together are easy enough to replace if CodeGear is ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Coming from delphi - looking for an IDE - willing to spend money
    ... money on a python IDE. ... As a beginner I reckon integrated debugging would be helpful. ... I sympathize entirely (I've been a Delphi user since v2 and have yet to ... Stani's Python Editor (SPE) ...
    (comp.lang.python)