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Hi All, Thanks for the replies. I'm currently using Delphi XE. It's worked well for me, fairly quick, mostly stable, gets the job done. Now I have third party component vendors providing features I need but only for newer Delphi versions. XE2 is supported at the moment but I imagine it will be next for the chop. I've tried 10.2.3 which seems OK but it is so slow, especially in the forms designer. I'll try the others mentioned in this thread to see if they are any better. At least I won't need to install and try every single version since XE. It's interesting that most people seem to prefer the very old versions of Delphi and *almost* universally dislike 10.3.1. That is surely something that Embarcadero need to focus on. If their focus is on extracting as much money as possible from existing customers, I would imagine that no new feature (or skin) would beat a stable and responsive IDE.

FlexCel also read / writes CSV files

The IDE which you use to edit the project and the compiler which you use to build & deliver need not be the same... I use FinalBuilder for my builds so I can specify which compiler to use. So I can edit in one Delphi version and build using another. Often, if I migrate a project to a newer Delphi version, I want to avoid breaking things. So I keep editing using the old IDE until it compiles without warnings in both compiler versions. This way the conversion can be a gradual process and I can still publish new releases and bugfixes if the conversion isn't ready yet. And sometimes it is useful to deliberately use an older compiler in the build process if it produces much smaller compiled code. The difference between Delphi 2009 and Rio is quite dramatic. Now I know that this doesn't make much sense in single-executable projects but it does have an impact if the project contains two dozen DLL's that suddenly triple in size.

Honestly, I see no reason why these things should cause slowing down or breaking of code tools. Code tools must work regardless of code style used.

@jeanmilost One question comes to mind...why is this not a FMX component? As someone who is trying to do some cross-platform work in Delphi, many times I feel the second-class relative here

The documentation is misleading there. The command line switch for not loading the last project is -np.

Delphi 10.2.3 is very good. I use it for all new Delphi apps. I have Delphi 10.3.1 also, but I do not like the skinning and it is slower. So I do not use it. I hope Embarcadero makes an option to unskin. I sadly has to spend a lot time maintaining and developing in Delphi 5 for a specific application. Delphi 5 IDE and features has a lot annoying limitations. Due to large source size (~1.1 million LOC) the compiler inside IDE sometimes report error (I think it runs out of space for identifiers). The DCC32 command line compiler does not have the problem. In the past I have used Delphi 7 a lot, and that is my favorite of classic Delphi versions.

It's true - and it the IDE stability issue has been pretty bad. Note that the question was a combination - best IDE stability and VCL win-32 development. In that context, I believe XE2's minor IDE quirks very much outweigh Delphi 2007's more limited dev capabilities. (+Generics, RTTI enhancements, Unicode support) If it's just IDE, then I pick Delphi 5. Super quick load time, no licensing quirks/worries.

Yes, sadly. In my experience, XE2 is quite stable. Although I do have newer versions installed in VMs, I never really used any of them. I never upgraded my projects beyond XE2.

Maybe Delphi 5, because still so many people are using this. (And this is the biggest problem with Delphi probably).

That would be like Christmas, Easter and birthday together.

Any way to make those Blue Balls (pun intended) different color? To me almost invisible.

In short future this and other IDE performance issues will be resolved ... I hope 🙂

It so happens I have written a tutorial on that exact topic. Here it is: Disabling Live Bindings, The Tutorial Google "disable live bindings". [the end]

Hi Anders, Partially my fault, I initially thought it was the save action until I saw that it wasn't and it was in fact the close. YESSSS!!!!!! All good now. I disabled the 3 LiveBindings libraries and now the save/close all takes around 10 seconds. :-) Having now done that, I seem to recall a similar thing a couple of years ago. Note to self - Disable LiveBindings when any new Delphi comes along. Thanks Anders, and to all the other contributors. Regards, Ian

If it is neither the file system nor registry accesses, then you could try to debug the Delphi IDE (with another Delphi instance) and pause the debugged IDE while it is taking its time to save the project. Then you can switch to the main-thread and look at the call stack to find out what the IDE is doing. How to debug the Delphi IDE itself.

WTF Embarcadero, you are just alienating the few paying customers you have left. If you use activation as a licensing mechanism, you MUST offer deactivation or a means to move licenses, without requiring support involvement. Seriously pissed off by this move, the cow is almost milked dry!

For anyone who is interested, I contacted CData and they told me their FireDac components do not support FMX at all. Disappointing...

@Mark Williams I'm genuinely surprised that Error Insight is working for you apart from inline variables. Apart from small (very small) projects this has never been the case for me since they introduced it, back in the day. So I guess...lucky you. I have to disable it every time I install Delphi. *sigh*

Hi Team, D10.3.1, 32Bit, Win 10 64Bit PC. I am running a pretty good Dev PC. I am working on a pretty large project, approx 305 .pas files/forms. If I make some changes and tell Delphi to Close All, it can take more than 10 minutes before Delphi finishes and I can continue. There doesn't seem to be a lot happening as far as the PC itself is concerned, the CPU usage sits at around 12-13%. See attached. Is there anything I can tweak to improve the save/close time? Regards & TIA, Ian

RSP-14289 is still open and a comment suggests it still plays this way in Rio.. Created: 24/Apr/16 4:05 PM

Hi Team, et al, This has consumed too much of my time. 305 files, if I do a global component replace with GExperts, say TButton to TBitBtn, then save the project, the files save very quickly, it is the closing that takes around 13 minutes. As I can edit and do what I need to do in D2007, and save/close in under 30 secs, I will do all my updating there. Thank you all for your suggestions although some of them are out of my ken. ;-) Regards, Ian