Mark NZ

I prefer to have GExperts/CNPack to add missing IDE functionality whenever possible but we have problems with/without it, most of us normally don't have extra components apart from VirtualTreeView, a small number of our own GUI controls for forms and our own internal debug evaluators installed (they're something else that's been a problem to get working in various Delphi versions due to Delphi bugs). If you only use 32bit then that would have saved you a LOT of problems with the debugger over the years, yes there have been problems with inline variables but they are pretty much okay now. The IDE AV's when compiling (compile is almost useless, need to use build). We've had to switch between Delphi and msbuild at times on some of our projects to get them to build and currently use a mixture. Problems with 4k screen, toolbars corrupting, code jumping not working, code insight, ide crashes (they can be occasional but have recently had days where I gave up editing in Delphi and used another editor as was happening a lot with certain files), IDE not responding for seconds (eg frequently with find in files), tools that don't work (eg Find Class which crashes, Find References which is mostly greyed out, Refactor which misses things), debugger showing incorrect line in code (usually be a few lines but can be 20 or so out), debugger not able to show/evaluate values, the Parnussus parallel debugger looked great but was an unusable failure, we gave up on the Delphi parallel library and use OTL, use another JSON library due to bugs encountered in the Delphi one. Luckily we've been able to generally patch the Delphi libraries when bugs have been found that effect us - unfortunately got a new one in Delphi 11.3 System.pas where they've made a notification change that causes a runtime crash for us which I think is a bug but have left it to my co-worker to investigate and try and build a simple test case for Embarcadero. This bug might be harder to work around as we can't simply put a patched System.pas into our patches search path folder as Delphi won't allow you to (re)compile System.pas (that applies to several other units as well). Bugs take years to get fixed (or don't get fixed) when given simple reproduction steps and/or a patch to fix them. We had one where they relatively quickly 'fixed' a bug and they included incorrect comments and introduced a new obvious memory leak.

We have smaller projects ranging from 500 000 lines to larger ones around 2.4 million, about 30 regularly used projects and code insight problems with most of them. Code insight is getting better but the whole IDE is bad enough that two of the 5 devs here have given up on it and are using Visual Studio Code for editing Delphi and only switch back when they really have to for debugging or form editing. I've been working on a a non Delphi Linux project for large chunks of the past year so haven't invested any time in switching but have tried VS Code and I think once I learn to use it quickly I'll switch as well as it doesn't crash like the Embarcadero IDE. If VS Code had a form designer and Delphi debugger it would make the Delphi IDE completely redundant, especially if the debugger worked properly (Embarcadero debugger is frequently problematic for us in x64 which is the platform we need to use, again better than it was a few years ago but still lots of problems)

For us sometimes code completion works in Delphi (very small projects), that's the paid enterprise version, most of the time it doesn't - you just get use to it with Delphi. Yes it and lots of other bugs are frustrating but if you're stuck with a legacy code base you don't have much choice until the cost of using it just gets too great 😞

I can confirm that in my case the compiler compile AV's happen without switching between project/build configurations (and over multiple Delphi versions), hopefully the 32/64bit is a more reliable trigger though for the same issue (might make it easier to find).

I also get a large number of AV's when compiling via the IDE, started prior to Delphi 11.1, still a problem in D11.3, just got into the habit of always building. We do use MSBuild (think this was due to build errors if we didn't). I encounter a number of other errors with the IDE and it's not feasible to spend time attempting to chase them down 😞, I have at times attempted to reproduce some of bugs with simple reproductions steps and have raised Jira issues for these and VCL bugs. Embarcadero have even fixed some of those, the others are waiting for them to look at. I suspect a number of issues are related to project size - and for the person who said to review every line of your code, if we allowed 2 seconds per line that'd be half a year of full time work, for just one of our projects. Yeah, nah. With regards to AV checking I'm going to look at that, we're already be excluding our own source code as have run into a handful of problems with Sophos if we don't.

Marco Cantu's book says it should, page 26 of the 10.4 version It would be very nice if it did work as one of our senior developers who's in charge of a couple of projects is very anti the verbose XMLDoc and is also a proponent of 'well written code self documents' which unfortunately isn't helpful if the code has a mistake and you're trying to work out intricacies of what it is supposed to do or your trying to find the correct method etc out of a range of them. If /// worked he would grudgingly use it. For the rest of our projects we do use the full notation but we have a huge lot of legacy code where it would be nice to replace existing method header comments using braces to just use /// and very quickly have xmldoc working

I've also had Delphi 11.3 lock up several times (requiring kill from task manager) and debug sessions fail. Don't know if it's any worse yet for that than Delphi 11.1/11.2 or if I've just had bad run this morning and yesterday

This is a pre existing bug across many Delphi versions and I often end up getting a VERY tall toolbar zone mostly full of whitespace. I can go for hours/days/weeks and occasionally months at a time before hitting it. Think it's also an issues with RDP and different DPIs. Work around that I uses when it gets to around 6 lines is to delete entries in Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Embarcadero\BDS\22.0\Toolbars After a day of use I think 11.3 code insight is better than before. Had to kill code insight after first startup it as pretty much wasn't working at all but since then most jumping and auto search/lookup has worked. Find class still doesn't work (crashes). Still get regular AV's when compiling but as per previous releases doing a build works. When I installed 11.3 installation there were problems (AV or crash or similar) with Parnassus DLL's, I renamed folder with them in, installed Delphi and then uninstalled and reinstalled plugins. Help insight seems to be working, occasionally slow (15seconds vs a second or two). Simple /// style help insight still not working (ie without <summary> tag), eg /// This method calculates XXX and returns YYY

We see issues with TTask's not starting or slow to start with Delphi that still exist in 10.3.2, this has been happening now for several years across different versions! The problems can be intermittent but frequent. My boss had no issues with TTask for quite some time while for me it was VERY frequently unusable - same code running. He's now seen on his machine the issues I was running into. Here are links to a few logged issues, in 23466 there are comments from Embarcadero that they are aware of the issues and there are no resources currently dedicated to it. There is an 'EPIC' assigned for R104 so maybe it'll be better by the end of next year. https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-23466 https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-12557 (closed as works as expected, I believe behaviour is wrong) https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-15233 https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-24103 https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-23874