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The Delphi IDE has the quite useful option to add custom entries to the Tools menu. These entries call external programs with some “Macros” that reference the current IDE status, e.g. the currently active project or source file and some of their properties like the output directory or the current editor column and row. GExperts already enhances the Tools Properties dialog by adding auto completion for the file name and the working directory (for Delphi 6 and 7 it also adds support for Drag and Drop, but that doesn’t work for later versions). It has always irked me that there was no easy way to port these custom tools entries from one Delphi version or installation to another. I always had to copy and paste four fields to achieve that. GExperts now adds two new buttons to export and import the current entry: Read on in my blog post https://blog.dummzeuch.de/2019/06/08/new-gexperts-ide-enhancement-export-and-import-entries-for-the-tools-menu/

Also keep in mind that they've told us for 20 years now that we don't understand marketing. Perhaps not -- I certainly do not understand THEIR marketing. But in my career I have learned a good deal about customer retention. According to LinkedIn, his title is now: Mergers and Acquisitions Executive Advisor at Embarcadero Technologies. And that does not seem to be marketing.

It also doesn't address the fact that Embarcadero service reps are simply outright refusing to do the bumps for those who aren't on current subscription. His "clarification" doesn't address what Embarcadero is actually doing. I'm starting to suspect that this is going to be like the resolution of the Delphi Pro EULA incident, where Embarcadero tried to convince everyone that they never actually made any change. In this case, his clarification is actually a policy reversal and now he's going to tell sales to stop refusing to do the bumps. Then we'll all be told it was never the policy and we just misunderstood. It'll be just like this:

History will show that not firing him was the worst move by EMBT after this total betrayal of loyal customers..

Clarity is certainly not one of his strong points.

Atanas just posted an update on his blog post. Policy Update: We still receive occasional comments on this and want to make sure we are clear on our Policy. Registration limits were introduced a long time ago with very valid use cases, but many of these are now outdated. We still do them, just now they get approved by Account Management (Sales/Renewals) vs. Support. Further, we have done several auto-bumps for everyone that should limit these issues altogether (and will do more as needed). As communicated, over the summer, we will work on a more automated way to increase registration limits through the self-service portal. It looks like there was an issue with the auto bump. I can manually process your registration bump if you private message me on here or email me: firstname dot lastname at embarcadero.com

Similar story here. I was happily on Delphi 7. Drank the fire monkey/ data snap kool aid and upgraded to XE8. I had the grand vision of one pascal code based for server, mac, windows, and iOS. It was a total failure and so now i have a VCL app on Berlin and i'm paying for the maintenance because the app has to work. Delphi seems to be in the final phase of life. Wringing every cent out of customers that have critical systems built in it who they know they have over a barrel. I don't think any of it is a mistake, but a well orchestrated plan to maximize return on an investment. The first clue was when they came in and clobbered the dev team here in the U.S. I dont pay for the license, but i'd rather bill my customer the time to get the app ported to something else than continue to pay for this tool. Delphi is dead to me.

I'm aware of TOSVersion, but it's simply not available in some of the Delphi versions I frequently use. As stated in the blog post, the method(s) described there even work(s) with Delphi 6.

Funny I still have a reg file from when I used Seattle: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Embarcadero\BDS\17.0\Form Design] "Show NonVisual Components"="True" Since it was never changed to include Berlin that must have been fixed.

I have never done that but thank you for encouraging me! I just found out that, at least in my special case, the IDE runs into this error when you Are using the form designer Edit -> Hide non-visual components (Ctrl+H) Close the project After that, the registry path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\17.0\Form Design has "Show NonVisual Components"="False" This appears to be deadly. Just setting this value back to "True" makes my RAD Studio work again. I am on Delphi 10.0 Seattle. Not sure if it also affects other versions.

Everything worked out fine. Took more than an hour, because after upgrading to 10.14, macOS discovered there is something called 10.14.3 available, and installing that took some time again. Delphi-wise I still can't use the 64Bit iOS-Simulators, but apart from that, everything is A-OK.