RAD Studio 11 Alexandria Patch 1 Available

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

Details from Marco: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/rad-studio-11-alexandria-patch-1-available/

[Martin Sedgewick 30]

I am a big fan of this new way of patching. Gets some issues out quicker than waiting on Update 1 which could be months away. Hopefully these fixes are a benefit to many.

Nice to see they have fixed the XP TThread issue, which they didnt have to fix, but keeps everyone who needs it working on XP for a while longer without having to apply a workaround

[mvanrijnen 123]

Would be nice if they would patch 10.4.x also 😞

 

[FredS 138]

5 hours ago, mvanrijnen said:

Would be nice if they would patch 10.4.x

Be happy with what you've got 🙂

Edited October 25, 2021 by FredS

[David Heffernan 2345]

5 hours ago, mvanrijnen said:

Would be nice if they would patch 10.4.x also 😞

 

Didn't they announce a few years ago that they would maintain a number of older versions with important patches, for some time after release of major upgrades, but then never did. 

[mvanrijnen 123]

8 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

Didn't they announce a few years ago that they would maintain a number of older versions with important patches, for some time after release of major upgrades, but then never did. 

Yes, that was one of the big reasons here to take a subscription (for us).  

Maybe they find the patches not important enough, same reason they choose too keep absolute radio silence to their users about things. 

(with their level of communication, one would think that EMB is run by the CIA : ) ).

Edited October 26, 2021 by mvanrijnen

[Vandrovnik 214]

8 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

Didn't they announce a few years ago that they would maintain a number of older versions with important patches, for some time after release of major upgrades, but then never did. 

I guess they do not have any free resources to backport changes to older versions. In that situation, I prefer current situation - use resources to patch and improve just the current version and don't split resources over two or more versions.

[dummzeuch 1505]

15 minutes ago, Vandrovnik said:

I guess they do not have any free resources to backport changes to older versions. In that situation, I prefer current situation - use resources to patch and improve just the current version and don't split resources over two or more versions.

While I agree with you  that that's the best use of limited resources, the promise of supporting older versions as part of the subscription still stands, and we paid for it. One could call that a breach of contract.

[David Heffernan 2345]

29 minutes ago, Vandrovnik said:

I guess they do not have any free resources to backport changes to older versions.

Did they return the money that customers paid? If not, what did they do with it?

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

That raises the question: How much of the subscription price is declared being used for patching older versions? (and can I exclude that from my subscription when I don't need that?)

[Alexander Elagin 143]

All this once again raises a question about a LTS verison of Delphi. Let those who need yearly new bells and whistles have their yearly releases, and the others who need to have a solid stable version have it with all the necessary patches.

[Vandrovnik 214]

41 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

Did they return the money that customers paid? If not, what did they do with it?

They probably don't return money. In February 2019, when I complained loudly about bugs in Delphi 10.3 and 10.3.1, I got a small discount for next subscription, which I bought later in 2019.

[Vandrovnik 214]

14 minutes ago, Alexander Elagin said:

All this once again raises a question about a LTS verison of Delphi. Let those who need yearly new bells and whistles have their yearly releases, and the others who need to have a solid stable version have it with all the necessary patches.

In the past, I was also happy with one version for many years, but once you use Delphi to create an application for Android and you want to keep this application up to date in Google Play, you probably need this yearly new bells - without it, Google Play will not allow you to upload updates for older API.

[Der schöne Günther 316]

About backporting: They did some of it around the time of XE8 / 10.0 Seattle, but not much after that, as far as I recall.

 

Quote

This is part of the ongoing initiative to make available fixes done in newer versions (in this case 10.1 Berlin and its updates) to customers still on previous versions, something we informally call "back-porting".

https://community.embarcadero.com/article/technical-articles/16439-fall-2016-xe8-and-10-seattle-updates

 

Here is an example of a pretty serious bug in System.Generics.Collections that never got backported. Thread includes comments from Marco Cantu why it didn't get backported.

[RSP-13196] TQueue<TBytes> doesn't add elements - Embarcadero Technologies

 

But I honestly cannot see anywhere that something like that was ever promised or sold. Of course it would be nice, but I can't really blame them, we also don't do backports in our software 😏

[Lars Fosdal 1791]

They could have made the "Patch available" a little more prominent, as well as putting it in the "New in GetIt" and "Promoted in GetIt" panes.

[mvanrijnen 123]

In the contract (we haqve with the sales company, barnsen), is stated: 

- The yearly maintenance contract includes all new version udates, maintenance upgrades en technical support.

So i think under maintenace upgrades, many people (including me), will think that will be some patches/maintenance of known bugs in xx old versions backwards, so you can build your developed software with a less buggy develop environment. 

 

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

3 hours ago, Alexander Elagin said:

All this once again raises a question about a LTS verison of Delphi. Let those who need yearly new bells and whistles have their yearly releases, and the others who need to have a solid stable version have it with all the necessary patches.

Your words should go into God's ears (handmade translation of a native saying)

[Achim Kalwa 61]

7 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

They could have made the "Patch available" a little more prominent, as well as putting it in the "New in GetIt" and "Promoted in GetIt" panes.

Any the should remove that hint after installing the patch. I'm working with several VMs; and sometimes I forget which VM includes the patch and which one still needs the patch. Some information in the About-box would be helpful, too. Delphi 11 Patch 1 still shows <No Updates Installed>.

[Darian Miller 361]

They used to have a "Premium" subscription option which included prior version support always with the caveat "some limitation apply."  I believe they did provide a backport for a couple of fixes but that was years back.  They have changed their support agreements since then to remove that line.

 

But, the option is still listed online this older page:

https://support.embarcadero.com/annual

Update Subscription (RAD Studio, Delphi, C++Builder)

The base level annual agreement for Update Subscription. Service features are:

• Features and benefits are listed here https://www.embarcadero.com/support
• One support contact per covered Embarcadero Product License
• Three (3) incidents annually per covered Embarcadero Product License (Excludes Starter and Academic licenses)
• Access to all product updates and upgrades released during the term of the agreement
• Product updates and upgrades delivered by electronic transfer
• Phone access to the Embarcadero Support Center during regional business hours
• Access to the Embarcadero online knowledgebase
• Online support incident submittal and tracking; full access to Embarcadero Support Online

The support element of the service is provided until the predefined number of incidents has been used or 12 months have elapsed, whichever comes first. The maintenance element of the service is always provided for the full 12 months.

Premium

The highest level annual agreement includes all of the standard service features listed above. Additional service features are:

• Features and benefits are listed here https://www.embarcadero.com/support
• Three (3) additional incidents for the covered Embarcadero Product(s)
• Highest priority for submitted support incidents
• Prior version support/updates for top issues (some limitations apply)

 

 

For older references: here's a 2016 post from Google+ (exported to this blogsite) there was a comment back in 2018 which mentions 'Prior version support/updates for top issues (some limitations apply"

https://delphi-developers-archive.blogspot.com/2016/08/today-was-first-time-i-heard-of.html

 

 

Here's another reference from the 2016 time frame which was a brochure for Support options:

https://github.com/ideasawakened/DelphiKB/blob/master/library/embarcadero_premium_subscription.pdf

 

[Sherlock 663]

On 10/26/2021 at 10:21 AM, Alexander Elagin said:

All this once again raises a question about a LTS verison of Delphi. Let those who need yearly new bells and whistles have their yearly releases, and the others who need to have a solid stable version have it with all the necessary patches.

I guess those folks are still on D2007.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

33 minutes ago, Sherlock said:

I guess those folks are still on D2007.

That would only qualify as a LTNS version