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I'm happy with different Delphi installations living in their virtual machines (Hyper-V). That also allows me to transfer the exact same Delphi installation to different PCs with no need to activate again.

ICS V8.65 has been released at: http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/ICS_Download ICS is a free internet component library for Delphi 7, 2006 to 2010, XE to XE8, 10 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio and 10.4 Sydney, and C++ Builder 2006 to XE3, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio and 10.4 Sydney. ICS supports VCL and FMX, Win32, Win64 and MacOS 32-bit targets. The distribution zip includes the latest OpenSSL 1.1.1i win32, with other versions of OpenSSL being available from the download page. Major Changes in ICS V8.65 include: 1 - The ReadMe8.txt file has a new 'Getting Started with ICS' section listing the types of projects ICS may be used for, and suggesting the correct components to use, and their related sample applications for testing. This is recommended reading for anyone doing new ICS development since it discusses all the new high level components like TSslHttpRest added in the last few years which can reduce development effort considerably. It may also be viewed at: http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/ICS_Getting_Started 2 - Added new TIcsRestEmail component that provides basic support for Google and Microsoft Outlook email REST APIs including OAuth2 login and refresh to get an access token for SMTP and POP3 XOAuth2 and 0AuthBearer authentication. TIcsRestEmail has methods to send and read email, to list IDs in a mailbox, read headers and message bodies by ID, send emails and delete emails. 3 - The SMPT, POP3 and MailQueue samples all now support XOAuth2 and 0AuthBearer authentication using the TIcsRestEmail component. The low level component call an event to get the authentication access token, which is provided by IcsRestEmail, together with a refresh token which is saved instead of a password. 4 - To access email using REST APIs or OAuth2/SMTP/POP3 an 'application account' needs to be created though the Google or Microsoft provider console. 5 - Added a new TIcsTwitter component and sample, requires a developer account from Twitter. Includes login to Twitter, send tweet, search tweets and get specific tweets, all responses are Json which the application needs to untangle. 6 - Improved TRestParams allowing them to save more Delphi types correctly without conversion to strings, and to save parameters in new formats. 7 - There are various OAuth2 improvements to make it easier to implement. Added several TOAuthUri records designed to set-up common OAuth2 account settings for providers like Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Sipgate, by using the LoadAuthUri method. 8 - TSimpleWebSrv continues to get less simple, it has aWebSrvIP2 property for a second address so it can listen on IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time, with and without SSL if necessary. Setting WebSrvIP to localhost sets both 127.0.0.1 and [::1] so the browser OAuth2 redirect can choose IPv4 or IPv6. 9 - Made some improvements to SuperObject, used for Json creation and parsing. When parsing Json there are new functions that return a sensible error message about parse errors and the location. There is a new object type DateTime or DT which reads or writes TDateTime to avoid the application needing to do the ISO string conversion. Json can now be parsed to a depth of 64 levels. 10 - Rewrote and improved the way ICS reads SSL/TLS certificates and bundles, simplifying code that has got partly duplicated over the years as new methods were added, and improving error handling so the infamous stack error should no longer appear, instead more useful messages. All certificate files are now written with the UTF8 character set for the added comments that may include non-ASCII characters. 11 - All the ICS root bundles are now created cleanly by an application, rather than mostly manually by copy and editing, to reduce errors. This fixed four corrupted root certificates in the older bundles, see http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/FAQ_SSL/TLS_Certificate_Authority_Root_Stores 12 - Previously the Jose unit offered functions primarily for client JWS/JWT REST applications, it now includes extra functions for REST servers to check and verify the JWS/JWT sent by clients. The Jose sample application has new tests for JWS/JWT, and to parse and display Json. 13 - Added a new Multi Host FTP Server sample using IcsHosts. Really designed to be a Windows service application. It supports multiple SSL hosts with multiple listeners, can order it's own SSL certificates and will create self signed certificates for any missing, and will email status information and errors to an administrator. 14 - Fixed a long term external SSL session cache issue in some components and samples that meant if an SSL handshake fails due to a bad certificate or chain, it is necessary to remove the SSL session from cache so an immediate retry does not succeed by skipping the certificate checks. This is only a short term issue, because the cache is usually cleared after a few minutes. This will effect any client applications using the external SSL session cache including HTTPS. 15 - Increased the TCP send and receive buffer size to 64K in all components and samples, and generally don't allow it to be set lower. Unfortunately the default buffer size never kept up with faster internet speeds which meant some components transferred data slowly. 16 - Made some improvements ordering SSL/TLS certificates. Made Windows Server DNS updating using WMI more robust so wild card Acme orders work reliably. 17 - Made some internal changes loading OpenSSL, to avoid the two DLLs being loaded from different directories and to give better exceptions if they are missing. More detailed release notes are at: http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/ICS_V8.65

Compile and press F7 and you'd know. I would recommend that you change the autocreate datamodules so they're created on-demand instead. That way you'll defer the overhead until the datamodule is actually needed. Something like: type TMyBigDataModule = class(TDataModule) ... end; function MyBigDataModule: TMyBigDataModule; implementation var FMyBigDataModule: TMyBigDataModule; function MyBigDataModule: TMyBigDataModule; begin if (FMyBigDataModule = nil) then FMyBigDataModule := TMyBigDataModule.Create(Application); Result := FMyBigDataModule; end; Yeah. All those features and versatility definitely comes at a price. Since they switched to a subscription only model they have become become lazy with regard to avoiding dependencies and so the applications become pretty bloated. Put a simple grid on a form and you get much of the spreadsheet stuff linked in as well.

I've found a post from April 2019 by Dave Nottage that looks like it might be adapted to do the trick: // Bit of a "hack" to get the exact paths of the pdf files deployed to /Contents/Resources/Startup LSourceName := TPath.GetDirectoryName(ParamStr(0)); LSourceName := TPath.Combine(StringReplace(LSourceName, '/MacOS', '', []), 'Resources/Startup/' + AFileName); ...seems to work OK 🙂. Would make a nice addition to the built in TPath class: class function TPath.GetAppResourcesPath:string; var appPath:string; begin appPath:=TPath.GetDirectoryName(ParamStr(0)); result:=TPath.Combine(StringReplace(appPath,'/MacOS','',[]),'Resources/Startup/'); end; ...though it would need adapting further to produce a sane result on all supported platforms.

Or use GetIt. RAD Studio will link you to the patch on the launch page. I can confirm this solves the linkers errors when using TClientDataSets with SDK 14.2. I'll try 14.3 next, fingers crossed.

@Anders Melander - I prefer the method that David describes. Return a documented error that can be handled. The criteria of the assert means you actually know the situation and should be able to do so. For me, asserts are contract validators that I use in debug mode. If the asserts hits me, I love to see it straight away in the debugger. I am not a fan of asserts in production code. Silly car analogy: Assert means you will drive off the road when you hit an unexpected turn. Asserts off and condition validation and error handling means you hit the brakes instead.

There are quite a few intrinsic functions that have been around for awhile but are still not documented by Embarcadero, but they are by 3rd parties. For instance, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30417218/. See https://www.google.com/search?q=delphi+undocumented+intrinsics

More issues fixed, I would hope! We've actually found and already fixed or plan to fix several already, which were found by this plugin.

Anything after Application.Initialize is easy to track... the trick is when some earlier actions cause slowdown. When running app in IDE by F7, process is stopped at the entrypoint when all binary file reads and necessary resource loads are made by OS. Then, enabling "Use debug DCUs" and "Trace into", you can trace System.InitUnits that executes all init sections of used units. Something like a non-breaking breakpoint at line "TProc(P)();" with options "Eval expression" = "inttostr(i) + ' ' + inttostr(gettickcount)" will give timings. When the villain's index is spotted, you can "Trace into" the above line to find out what unit it is.