This article is one chapter of my book Delphi in all its glory – For more than mere programmers, the first book of the series. Want to see what the compiler really does with a property? Ask for its address. Below, Obj.Prop is a read-only property that either reads the field FProp directly or calls […]
The address of a property: what the Delphi compiler does with @, var and FreeAndNil Read More »
I just published a new GitHub repository: Awesome-AI-For-Delphi. It is a curated list of tools, libraries, MCP servers, and resources for using AI with Delphi. Think of it as a single place to discover everything that exists at the intersection of AI and Pascal/Delphi development. The list covers: MCP Servers — let Claude Code and
“AI-Assisted Development for Delphi” is the fifth book in the “Delphi in All Its Glory” series. Released April 2026. Why This Book Exists There are a gazillion books about AI out there. This is the only one written for Delphi developers. Your LinkedIn feed says programmers will be obsolete by next Thursday. Meanwhile, you’re
The “Delphi in all its glory” book [5] – AI-Assisted Development for Delphi Read More »
Using Claude Code for Delphi — What I Learned Writing a Book About It What started as a frustrated blog post became a 280-page book. Here’s the story. In early 2026, a post on Delphipraxis claimed that one hour of development with Claude Code was worth a full day of solo programming. Bold claim. I
“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
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 a
Can’t load package xyz.bpl. %1 is not a valid Win32 application – BPL dependency failure Read More »
I was undecided if I should attend to this conference or not because I didn’t have 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
Amsterdam Delphi Summit 2025 (A call to arms for bringing in “fresh blood”) Read More »
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
Under FMX, TComponent.Visible effects also the design time! Read More »
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
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
You can publish your application on your website. But Microsoft SmartScreen will not like it at all if the binary is not signed. This is how the same application looks signed and unsigned: Last reviewed: September 2026 — and this time I bought the certificate myself. Two industry-wide changes reshaped this market since I first
Obtaining cheap EV/OV certificates & signing your application Read More »
So, because I built a program that has to resize/scale images up and down, I built this tool to test 13 resizing algorithms for Delphi. Tested algorithms JanFX SmoothResize JanFX Stretch Transform (from Graphics32) HB (Private) madGraphics (from madShi) VCL.ScaleImage (from Embarcadero) VCL.Stretch (from Embarcadero) SmoothResize (assembler) Windows Thumbnail (Windows API) Windows StretchBlt (Windows API)
Say no to crappy images in your Delphi programs. Finding the best resizing algorithm. Read More »
Note: This article is tightly connected to the “How to correctly set the compiler options” article. Somebody asked how to set the default project options for a new Delphi project. I stopped years ago wasting time with this. Instead I have a folder where I store a “template” project. You can find this Delphi
Never create a new Delphi project – Use templates instead! Read More »
I needed to open PDF files in Delphi. There seems to be a lot of libraries out there, but when my restrictions (read PDF, native Delphi code, cross-platform, acceptable price) started to kick in I realized that there are not so many options. I created therefore this Delphi PDF library comparison table to help me
Note: This page is an excerpt from my “Delphi in all its glory – Libraries” book. $(Auto) is a new environment variable, introduced in Delphi 10.4. Embarcadero didn’t make a big show around it so it went unnoticed by most programmers. But don’t ignore it! It is extremely useful for packages, where it can
My Experience with Cursor: The Promise and the Reality 2025.01 This week, I had the opportunity (or perhaps the misfortune?) to try out Cursor, a new tool that promises to enhance productivity for programmers. As someone who primarily works in Delphi, I was curious to see how it would stack up. Cursor is an AI-powered
The Delphi in all its glory book shows that at design time the IDE is the host of all visual components on our forms. If a single control misbehaves at design time it might take down the whole IDE. In most cases this happens while we drag and drop such components from Components Palette on
KSDev released this year CrossVCL – a framework that allows you to build multi-platform applications. What is the difference between Firemonkey and CrossVCL? If you want to make your current app multi platform, you need to port it to Firemonkey. With CrossVCL you don’t need anything!!! They really upgraded Delphi/C++ programming to a brand new
KSDev CrossVCL – A framework that allows you to build multi-platform applications. Read More »
List of IDE features that are cool Search backwards – Ctrl+F to do a search in your code. F3 to go to the next position Shift+F3 to go to previous position. Move/Relocate/Rename project’s files directly from Project Manager Navigate to recently modified code – Ctrl+Shift+F7 and Ctrl+Shift+F8 Search for usage – Right click a variable
I recently observed that Setup files created with WinRar have a high false positive detection rate from antiviruses. Here are the conclusions of some test I made, in order to reduce the false positive rate: RAR version SFX module Detection ratio WinRar 3.11 32bit 1/66 WinRar 4.2 32bit? 3/66 WinRar 5.50 32bit 6/67 WinRar 5.50
False antivirus reports on installers created with WinRAR Read More »
I stepped last week in a multiple-bug situation with EurekaLog for Delphi. I again wasted MORE than a day with this buggy “exception tracer tool”. My DRP file is like this: PROGRAM MyProgram; uses {$ifdef win32}fastmm4,{$endif} EurekaLog_units_come_here This worked fine until I compiled the program to 64 bits. On 64 bit, EurekaLog refused to work.
Most of my Delphi programs are flagged as virus by some antivirus programs. Some of these antivirus programs are really cheap/under-the-table products (such as Baidu and Comodo) other are big (TOP) name like Kaspersky. In theory you should report a false positive to the antivirus producers so they can fix their bug but if the
Delphi programs have too many false positive detections Read More »
Email sender settings in EurekaLog v7 SMTP Server [1] Simple MAPI MAPI Shell (MailTo) SMTP client [3] Can attach the ELP file Yes Yes [2] Yes [2] No Yes See sender’s email No [4] Yes Yes Yes No Email client software* Not required Required Required Required Not required Chance of success Highest chance among all
How to configure EurekaLog to send bugs via email Read More »
I wanted to send an email (“Send via SMTP client”) from EurekaLog v7.4.8.0 RC 1 but I was getting this error: FAILED: Error code = -2146885613 The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline EurekaLog 7.4.8.0 RC 1 Testing send with TELMailSMTPClientSender Options: _BugAppVersion=”21.0.17707.5020″ _BugID=”73D40000″ _BugIDSource=”bds.exe My email is
Today I needed a function that will wrap a string (a contiguous block of characters with no spaces) after 80 characters. Not only that I have found SysUtils.WrapText unsuitable (it can only wrap text IF the text contains spaces) but it is also terrible slow. So I build my own function: function WrapString(CONST s: string;
TStringBuilder – Optimizing Delphi’s strings for speed Read More »
After spending 2 full hours I managed to find the culprit for an IDE crash (access violation in VCL210). The cause was …drum roll please… CnPack! There was a palette in IDE’s main tool bar called MSDN Help. However, when I right click to configure the toolbar, the palette was not listed there to show
Delphi XE7 IDE crash due to CnPAck MSDN Help Integrated Read More »
Today I tried to open an old project. While loading the main DFM form I got a “No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target multi-byte code page” error. After some time I figured out what caused it: the form had a custom control that had a property like this: HeaderCellSpacing = 1.300000000000000000.
No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target multi-byte code page Read More »
So, Delphi’s help doesn’t tell us much about how to set up paths for DPK packages. It is ok. So, I will tell you how I do it so they work both on 32 and 64 Win platforms: My packages I have these major packages/folders: Graphics32 Drag and Drop (Melander) 3rd Party (many small packages
I keep getting this error at Delphi shut down: Application Error – Exception EAccessViolation in module rtl210.bpl at 00016A9C. Access violation at address 50066A9C in module ‘rtl210.bpl’. Read of address 06152AF8. Solution 1: The problem is fixed by restoring this registry key to its original state: [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareEmbarcaderoBDS15.0Known IDE Packages] Here is the pristine value for
Fix for Exception EAccessViolation in module rtl210.bpl at 00016A9C [SOLVED] Read More »
