Darian Miller

See also: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-35363

Ok, this made me laugh. After spending a few hours trying to get RAD Studio installed, I finally gave up on using my network named user license and used my license from the Beta. Granted, it's only got a few days left, but it helped me get the install finished (RAD Studio with Delphi/C++ Builder with all options selected except the two related to Interbase.) I thought that I would take a break and come back after destressing over the whole install failure. The IDE pops right up fairly quickly so I do: "File"->"New"->"Windows VCL Application - Delphi" and I get presented with "Error" - "No platform available for current project." Same thing for FMX. I cannot produce any more sentences without grumbling...

Just a future note to self... this error was likely due to all the licensing problems after the initial release. Apparently this message can appear if the license is incorrect. https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-34362

Recently announced on Embarcadero's website: https://www.embarcadero.com/

F1 seems to work for me without issue so far.

Finally - everything seems to be working with my network license. I updated my recent blog post with 3 possible fixes for license issues when installing RAD Studio 11. ('Update' your license in License Manager, Delete/Re-Import in License Manager, and Manually Host in ELC for network licenses.) https://www.ideasawakened.com/post/quick-fix-for-for-rad-studio-11-license-failure-during-installation

I tried the manual approach (for the first time) and I compared the results of the two .zip files and there were binary differences so I unzipped the file into .conf and replaced the .zip file there. This did give me a new "Delphi 11 Alexandria" item in the Manage Catalog screen so that's a step forward over using the "Host Licenses" button in ELC. I also copied the new namedxxx.slip to workstation. I removed the Beta license with License Manager and imported this slip and when starting RAD Studio and it repeatedly complained of license failure and it wouldn't load. I figured there was some trace of the now missing Beta key still around so I deleted c:\programdata\embarcadero and re-imported the .slip with license manager. Now, when launching RAD Studio, I get the product registration screen, I hit Cancel, and then No to the "No valid license info found..run the wizard again" screen, "Ok" on the "You are not licensed" screen and then the splash screen continues with "Registered (using license server)" comment. I ran with elevated privileges hoping that would cure it, but I still get the registration screens but it does allow me in. So I'm a little closer, thanks. There's apparently still some traces of an invalid license somewhere. I'll probably just blow out this VM and do a full re-install with the new .slip from the manual hosting process.

Walk around the chair, sit back down and try it again and get the same error. Exit / reload IDE, same problem. Try something different: File->New->VCL Form and it works. Try new project again and now it works as expected. Exit / reload IDE and it still works. Will try to simply forget this happened...

Irrelevant. Good products are cohesive. Different aspects work with each other and support each other. It's definitely relevant when you have limited resources and a lot of purchased legacy code. There's a business decision to be made - keep throwing money at something you know you are going to replace, or not. They are choosing to add language features knowing that their tooling doesn't fully support it. I'm sure it's a hard decision. I'd like to think I would have decided differently but I don't know the internals. I would assume you would build a well-defined language spec for the current implementation, build the tests to validate that current implementation matches the spec, correct or replace the tooling to support that spec while validating the tools with tests of their own, and then add new features while extending all of your tests. But that would take a lot of up front effort while yielding no immediate revenue which is probably why they took the path they did. I should probably be more empathetic to their situation, but at the end of the day CTRL-D doesn't do what CTRL-D is supposed to do.

The formatter is old tech - given the pace of new features, I imagine a brand new formatter engine won't be available for two years or so, and then it'll take some iterations to get fully functional. So - any new language feature (including inline vars going back to 10.3 in 2018) are years away from being supported by their internal code formatter. I imagine that the consensus is the old formatter sucked so badly that they assume few people use it so only a few would notice that new language features aren't supported. But I happen to like the code formatter and use it all the time so it blocks me from using new language features.

You are the first person that has mentioned network license success. It doesn't work for me on a clean machine. I gave up on network license and did get it installed using my Beta key. Both keys show up in License Manager and I just tried removing the Beta key and Delphi no longer starts. In your ELC - when you visit the Manage Catalog screen, does RS11 show up? (Mine does not...and I'm not sure how to add to that list, but is that even needed license activations.) Does your License Manager show "Delphi Enterprise" or does it mention 11 Alexandria? "Delphi Enterprise" is what is displayed in my readme_xxxx.txt file - can you confirm what's in yours? Delphi 11 Alexandria is listed as a product_name in in the catalog_xxxx.xml.

Just be aware that the formatter can muck up the code if using these new language improvements. (CTRL-D) https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-35318

I tried creating an installation support case on https://supportforms.embarcadero.com/ and when filling out the form and clicking on "Submit Case" button, the button becomes disabled, the text switches to "Please wait..." and nothing else happens.

Apparently some combinations of licenses and configurations don't work correctly... it's not 100% failure. I'd like to see that actual percentage though as I couldn't get my named network license to install either.

"To anyone trying to install RAD Studio 11, there is a hiccup on license refresh: In the Product Registration window please select the Advanced button, and in the License manager select your license and use the Update button. Alexandria gets added, continue with installation."

Yup. See here: https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store

That's a pretty common issue. Once you get huge amounts of data in one spot, the only solution is snapshots, if the source supports it. We had a 7TB database file and trying to make a full copy of it once/night took forever just to go from point A to point B. We relied on snapshots but liked to always have one full copy as well. There are solutions out there for an optimized backup up Exchange server but I haven't used them. We just prayed on occasion that the email server didn't crash as it would take a number of hours to get back up and running.

I would think a little bigger. Here's an easy thought process. Set your computer on fire. (If you are on a team in an office - consider a natural disaster destroyed your office location.) Now, get all new equipment and see how painful it is to get back up and running without having to recreate any previous effort. Can you do that today? There are multiple ways to minimize this pain. The most common way to protect part of your investment is to use version control on your source code. An additional tool could be snapshotting your VM and keeping the backups offsite. Keep in mind the 3-2-1 (or 3-2-3) backup strategy. Ideally, you would hit a few buttons to rebuild your systems and not even lose your current edit session. But the amount of effort and expense that you are willing to put in pretty much dictates the amount of effort it will take to rebuild.

Amazon S3 bucket. You can setup lifecycles to auto-delete data > 30 minutes.

Note: once you start down this path of customizing basic component behavior, it's best to derive a custom set of components. Derive your own component from TButton and reuse whatever custom code that ends up working out for you. You may find yourself with a custom version of all the basic components and you'll end up with customized behavior controlled in a central location. Whatever happens, please don't copy-n-paste this code into 27 different Click events throughout your app...

Managing multiple clicks is a common issue that offer many solutions...one simple way around it is the following code: procedure TUButton.Click; begin TUButton.Enabled := False; try //do stuff except on E:Exception do begin //handle errors end; TUButton.Enabled := True; end;

The RADStudio tooling still has a ways to go in order to catch up to the new inline variable language feature (first introduced in November 2018.) IMHO complete support for the language feature should have been available before its full release as I believe releasing it half baked was a waste of a lot of goodwill. At minimum, it should have been a user-enabled optional experimental feature. Last time I checked, some issues remain: RSP-32507 Inline variable breaks the Methods drop-down box in Navigation Toolbar RSP-33176 Extract method refactoring broken by inline var definition RSP-33365 In-block variables break the "Find references" RSP-23096 Incorrect debugger values RSP-22089 Code Formatter Fails on Inline Vars

True, but modern vs historical is appropriate in the particular sense that they likely have not adequately evolved their internal systems over time while the complexity of the product has skyrocketed. They seem to be trying to develop/test/release the 28th version of Delphi similar to how the 12th version was built. They appear to be slowly improving the internal tooling but it needs a major upgrade. Iterative releases, feature toggles, community empowerment and transparency, etc. - simply a long way to go. They are (mostly) out of the 90's (EDN still online?) now need to speed through the 2000's and 2010's and get current. Retooling their online presence seems to be happening. Hard to see the progress on internal operations though. They seem to be attempting to improve releases through sheer grit rather than appropriate increases in resources. That approach only goes so far before the people burn out and that really sucks as the equity decision makers typically don't care about people - but success in development projects is usually based on keeping the right people. (Fatal flaw with private equity types and development projects...innovation is typically not found in the board room unless your name is Elon.)

To their credit, the complexity of today's Delphi greatly eclipses a Borland version. I also wonder what the team size of internal experts is today is versus then.

Agreed. They are in the hard situation where they need to quickly release the bug fixes from prior releases that customers are demanding, but also trying to extend or replace old functionality which introduces a slew of new bugs. I spent years digging out of a very deep hole like that... it's not fun.