Delphi Blog – Delphi, in all its glory

FMX bug – Form has incorrect size after startup

Delphi / bug, Delphi, FMX, form, initialization

I have this weird bug in Delphi 13 FMX where the height of the controls is not correct, at app startup. procedure TForm1.AfterConstruction; begin inherited AfterConstruction; MakeDemoBubble; end; TAutosizeBoxText (based on TRectangle) is parented in a ScrollBox. It is set to Align=Top. procedure TForm1.MakeDemoBubble; begin mmoUserResponse.Text := ‘WhatsApp-like text bubble. ‘ + #13#10+ ‘Cool and […]

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Solar powered eBike

Delphi / bicycle, bike, ebike, electronics, panel, solar

I travel around 2000Km per year with my bicycle. And what can be better than 2000Km? 4000Km 🙂 So, I will attempt to attach a solar panel to my bicycle to replenish the battery (at least partially). Solar panels efficiency Typically ranges from 150-250 W/m² under peak sunlight. High-end panels hitting 220-300W/m². Factors Influencing Output

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Embarcadero Delphi CodeRage 2025 Summary [Day1] Free Code Agent: Build Faster Right in Your RAD Studio IDE

Delphi / AI, Delphi, programming, Tool

“Free Code Agent: Build Faster Right in Your RAD Studio IDE” Presented by Yai (CTO at Solutions, Embarcadero MVP) Core Idea * AI Code Agents are tools that accelerate coding tasks by generating, refactoring, and scaffolding code inside your IDE. * They do not replace developers; they augment productivity. * Example used: Gemini CLI

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Embarcadero Delphi CodeRage 2025 Summary [Day1] Maker AI: The Ultimate AI Ecosystem for Delphi

Delphi

Maker AI: The Ultimate AI Ecosystem for Delphi (Version 3.0) Presented by Gustavo Enriquez Core Problem * AI integration is fragmented: Multiple APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, LLaMA, Grok) each with unique SDKs and syntax. * Leads to high dependency and code obsolescence when models change. * Delphi developers need stability and longevity, not constant

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Embarcadero Delphi CodeRage 2025 Summary [Day1] Multithreading, Concurrency, Parallelism

Delphi

CodeRage 2025 was an amazing event. I created a short summary of the CodeRage Day1 presentation for my future reference. Then I thought that it might be useful for others also so I will post it here. This is time consuming… if possible I will summarize the other days also. The text is generated with

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Everything you need to know about Delphi FastMM

bug, bug report / Delphi, fastmm, fastmm4, fastmm5, memory manager

Note: This is an excerpt from my “Delphi in all its glory [Part 2]” book. Find the full chapter there. A memory manager is a very special piece of code that controls the allocation and deallocation of memory throughout the entire application. The memory management in Delphi is unique because ALL memory is

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Is it wise to use OnSaveState in FMX?

Delphi / android, Delphi, FMX

Android’s lifecycle model is a mess. The OS freely kills your process whenever it needs RAM, and you—the app developer—are expected to deal with the fallout. Android shifts its memory problems onto the app layer, leaving you to rebuild your internal state because the OS felt like freeing 200 MB. FireMonkey tries to give you

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Why we can’t close a form that runs a tight FOR loop, even if we are using Application.ProcessMessages?

Delphi / Delphi

A stackOverflow user wanted to know why clicking on the form’s close button while some FOR loop is running does nothing: procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var i: Integer; begin for i := 0 to 9999999 do begin Memo1.Lines.Add(‘hi’); Application.ProcessMessages; end; end; The issue comes from the lack of understanding of how the forms work. Here is

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The new PUSH/POP directive in Delphi 13

Delphi

The {$PUSHOPT} and {$POPOPT} directives introduced in Delphi 13 are used to save and restore the current set of compiler options and warning configurations. Useful when we want to include .inc files or code sections that might alter compiler settings, and we want to ensure that these changes do not affect the rest of your

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AI client library for Delphi

Delphi / AI, client, Delphi, llm

I decided to open source my AI client. For the moment it only supports Gemini, but it can be easily supported to support multiple LLMs by extending TLLMObject. * Support for sending multiple files to AI * Support for multi-turn chat * GUI to set up the LLM parameters * Save settings to disk for

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About the new Delphi 13 “magic” routine NameOf (also UnitName)

Delphi / Delphi, nameof, unitname

NameOf is a magic function introduced in Delphi 13. What it does is return the identifier name of a symbol (routine, variable, etc) as a string, as resolved by the compiler. It can be used for: Consistent naming Its main advantage is that if we later rename the function, the compiler forces the change

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How to easily port the IDE (registry) settings when you reinstall or upgrade Delphi

Delphi

When I upgrade to the next Delphi version, instead of re-configuring the IDE from zero, I usually “port” the settings from the old version to the new version. For this: I extract some registry keys to text (reg) files In each file I (batch) replace the old version to new version (for example “21.0” to

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Get operating system’s default language

Delphi, Windows / Delphi, FMX

I needed (for a project I am working on) to obtain the default language for the operation system. Preferable it should be in “human” format like “English” instead of “En-US”. The AI lead me to strange paths. In the end it tuned out to be quite easy so I created these two function (now part

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When did you switch your framework last time?

Delphi

I’ve seen JavaScript developers complain that every few years they’re forced to switch frameworks. Angular, React, Vue, Svelte… each one promising stability, then slowly fading out while the next shiny thing takes over. It’s a cycle of rewrites, migration guides, and “deprecated” warnings. And it hit me: I’ve been really lucky with Delphi.While others wrestle

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How to highlight identifier under cursor in (any) Delphi IDE

Delphi, ide / cnpack, Delphi, highlight, IDE

If you place the cursor on an identifier (variable/function name/etc), CnPack will show you where that identifier is used in your code. Look for example how easy is to spot where the FBuffPos variable is used in the code below: Also, see how “dangerous” instructions (“Exit”) have been marked in blue! Note: On your Delphi

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How to make NotePad++ open each document in its own tab?

Delphi / file, Multi-instances, notepad, plus, text

Here is the trick: Go to Preferences->Multi-instances->Default (mono-instance). Close notepad++ Go to “c:\Program Files\Notepad++” and create there an empty file called “asNotepad.xml” (of course, you will need Admin privileges for that). Result: When you double click a TXT file in Explorer, Notepad++ will open and show that new document in its own window/tab.

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Is it time to ditch the VCL?

Delphi, ide, Windows / AI, Delphi, IDE, os, plugin, windows

I’ve seen this trend where AI lacks (compared with other languages) when you try to use it for Delphi (VCL). Probably not their fault. Probably because of lack of code on GitHub…. 😞 Initially, I thought it was only an impression, but later tests (for example, generating a full program with Replit in Delphi and

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A vertically collapsible panel for Delphi (round up)

Delphi, delphi xe7, ide, Windows / Delphi

I was looking for a collapsible panel for many years.The most important feature I want from this control is to be able to collapse vertically. Here are the results of my research: FoldingPanel (VCL) I used FoldingPanel v1.3 http://www.torry.net/authorsmore.php?id=2386 for years. It comes with nice chevron bitmap too. Advantage: The component comes as a

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A bunch of surveys for Delphi users

Delphi / Delphi

Delphi is great for RAD. We all love Delphi, even when we are mad at it. In my opinion Delphi has 3 issues that Embarcadero has to fix in order to make Delphi more attractive. 1. It has ACTIVELY work to bring new Delphi programmers. 2. Solve the problems with the IDE stability 3. Has

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Best uses of AI for Delphi programmers

Delphi

I haven’t nailed down a favorite AI yet. Copilot’s at the bottom of my list—it churns out the worst Delphi code and gives answers so short they’re borderline useless. Grok’s been the frontrunner so far, based on my own tinkering. I had subscriptions to Google’s AI and to ChatGPT and Copilot. In some video presentations

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Can’t load package xyz.bpl. %1 is not a valid Win32 application – BPL dependency failure

bug, Bugs, Delphi, Windows / bpl, bug, code, Delphi, error, libraries, Pascal, programming, VCL

Locating BPL dependency failure In one instance my package required another package, but its BPL was not present. The error I got was “Can’t load package xyz.bpl. %1 is not a valid Win32 application”. I used the Dependency scanner feature from ‘PE Explorer’ ( www.heaventools.de ) to detect this. There was supposed to be

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Again on FreeAndNil – A meaningless debate?

Delphi / bug, Delphi, freeandnil

Recently, I came across a forum where somebody described FreeAndNil as an “abomination” and I think that’s a bit over the top. Let’s unpack this topic ca refully, with technical clarity and an eye for proportion. FreeAndNil(SomeObject) is just syntactic sugar for: if SomeObject <> nil then begin SomeObject.Free; SomeObject := nil; end; The actual

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Amsterdam Delphi Summit 2025 (A call to arms for bringing in “fresh blood”)

Delphi / amsterdam, Delphi, future, meeting, programming, roadmap, summit

I was undecided if I should attend to this conference or not because I didn’t had enough information about the previous one. So, here is my 2.5 cents. A Journey by Bicycle Setting off in early June from Denmark on two wheels, I pedaled a few hundred km for the Delphi summit.The northern weather delivered

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Delphi LSP stopped working? Fix it with 2 key strokes.

Delphi

Alt+T, E is all you need to press when the LSP stops working in Delphi. Delphi 12.3 introduced a new menu under Tools -> Reload LSP server. Alt+T, E is it keyboard accelerator. It will require under a second for LSP to restart. However, the menu will not be available to be reused for quite

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Under FMX, TComponent.Visible effects also the design time!

Delphi / bug, code, Delphi, FMX, Pascal, programming

In FMX, unlike the VCL, the Visible property affects both design time and runtime when set in the Object Inspector. That’s why setting Visible:= False in FMX hides components in the Form Designer, which is a big inconvenience. If you edit the form at design time often, you can keep Visible:= True in the designer

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(Issues with) Dialog boxes under cross-platform

Delphi / bug, code, Delphi, FMX, Pascal, programming

VCL had a nice and uniform message box system. Most important (and convenient), the messages were blocking. Because of the Android platform which does not support asynchronous messages, all this is gone. So I document here the behavior of few different ways in which we can display message boxes in FMX. None is perfect (not

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Connecting Delphi 12 to Gemini AI

Delphi / AI, Delphi, Gemini, IDE, Pascal, plugin

Generate your key here https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey and enter it into the IDE. As URL enter: https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1 Parameters Top-P [official documentation] Top-P changes how the model selects tokens for output. Tokens are selected from the most (see top-K) to least probable until the sum of their probabilities equals the top-P value. For example, if tokens A,

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New in Delphi Athene 12.1, 12.2, 12.3

Delphi / Delphi, new

Delphi Athene – Release 1 (12.1) Support for split editor views in the IDE. Use multiple editors side by side, above and below each other, or a mix, all in the same window. Right-clicking a tab and choose Split or Move. Split will create another version of the selected tab, while move will close the

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New in Delphi Athene (12.0)

Delphi / code, Delphi, FMX, IDE, new, Pascal, programming

IDE Removed deprecated features: VCL Translation Support & Modeling Object Inspector – New string list editor Multiline string Editor Multiline string literals The Find in Files dialog now has a new Subdirectory exclude mask option, which excludes specific folders from being searched when using the Search in directories and Include subdirectories There are default exclusions

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New in Delphi Sydney (10.4)

Delphi / Delphi, new

10.4 Styles are finally working! Better support for high DPI monitors. High DPI support in styles (skins) Per Control Styling Better cross platform support Custom managed records – records now support custom initialization, finalization, and copy operations. Developers can customize how records get created, copied, and destroyed, by writing the code to be executed at

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