Offline Help updates available from Embarcadero

[DelphiUdIT 176]

Hallo, for those unaware, Embarcadero has posted updates to the new offline Help for Alexandria 11.3.
This is the download link for the files.

 

http://docs.embarcadero.com/products/rad_studio/

 

Bye

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

There are some serious issues on that page. Especially with the "wiki" links. 

 

If I click on any "what's new" link of an old Delphi version because I want to find out which features were introduced in that version, it always leads me to the Alexandria wiki pages.   Very disappointing. Has Embarcadero suffered a data loss of old wiki versions ?

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

The Alexandria Wiki page has links to Previous Versions on the left.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

Correct, with a caveat  "Attention: Online documentation for versions earlier than Seattle is currently not available. You can refer to the help file installed with the product."

 

 

This is a p.i.t.a. if one wants to write code that correctly compiles with older versions of Delphi. 

 

[Remy Lebeau 1396]

8 hours ago, A.M. Hoornweg said:

This is a p.i.t.a. if one wants to write code that correctly compiles with older versions of Delphi.

Agreed.  I HATE that they did that.  I used to refer to the old docs pretty often, and now its all gone.  I have the source code for D5-XE3 and 10.3, but not for XE4-10.2 or 11.x.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

Does a Docker-like solution exist, that allows a user to "package" a Delphi version and "map" it into the system when necessary?
Delphi installations are simply too huge to keep more than a few installed and archiving a whole VM for each Delphi version is overkill.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

15 minutes ago, A.M. Hoornweg said:

Delphi installations are simply too huge to keep more than a few installed and archiving a whole VM for each Delphi version is overkill.

I use my build VM for that. It has Delphi versions 5, 7, D2007 up to 11 installed side by side and there still is plenty of room for more. When someday it will run out of disk space I can simply extend that.

 

BTW, having all versions on the same machine simplifies multi-version builds a lot.

 

My working environment is different, though. There I have several VMs for each of my customers to avoid problems with different needs and security. The Delphi versions on those may change during time.

The physical host is reserved for my own projects and has only Delphi versions 10 to 11 installed. Usually it is cleaned after some years - latest when the hardware changes.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

12 hours ago, Remy Lebeau said:

Agreed.  I HATE that they did that.  I used to refer to the old docs pretty often, and now its all gone.  I have the source code for D5-XE3 and 10.3, but not for XE4-10.2 or 11.x.

I have an idea that might work.  There's a service called "the internet archive" where people can archive snapshots of internet sites to prevent them from disappearing . 

 

I see that somebody has archived the Delphi 10 Seattle docwiki in 2018:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180825012640/https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Seattle/en/Main_Page

In the left side-bar of that page, you'll see links to older Delphi versions going back to version 2010.   These links will initially trigger a http error 301, then after a few seconds they redirect to an archived version which is functional!

 

By following these older links, I can reach the following pages:

 

Delphi 2010:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190507085636/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/2010/en/Main_Page

 

XE:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210513170545/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE/en/Main_Page

 

XE2:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190709193313/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE2/en/Main_Page

 

XE5:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180920190325/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE5/en/Main_Page

 

XE6:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190709093357/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE6/en/Main_Page

 

XE6:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190709093357/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE6/en/Main_Page

 

XE7:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190508184802/http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE7/en/Main_Page

 

 

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

Also this list from Darian Miller may give a rough overview: Delphi Master Release List

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

3 hours ago, Uwe Raabe said:

I use my build VM for that. It has Delphi versions 5, 7, D2007 up to 11 installed side by side and there still is plenty of room for more. When someday it will run out of disk space I can simply extend that.

 

Aren't you running out of environment space for path variables etc ? 

 

 

[dummzeuch 1505]

54 minutes ago, A.M. Hoornweg said:

Aren't you running out of environment space for path variables etc ? 

I'm not Uwe, but I have Delphi 6, 7 and 2006 to 11 installed on a physical machine in order to allow building GExperts for all those versions in one go.

Yes, the length of the path variable can become a problem, but there are ways around this:

 

1. Don't install to c:\program files but use a shorter name (c:\delphi).

2. Replace the long names with the short names in the path

3. Use additional environment variables (e.g. Delphi6Path, Delphi7Path etc.) and only add those in the path (Rapid Environment Editor is a very useful tool for that)

 

Works fine for me.

Edited March 31, 2023 by dummzeuch

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

1 hour ago, A.M. Hoornweg said:

Aren't you running out of environment space for path variables etc ? 

No: https://github.com/UweRaabe/CompressPath

[Brian Evans 105]

4 minutes ago, Uwe Raabe said:

No: https://github.com/UweRaabe/CompressPath

Private repo or something you made in your sleep and haven't realized isn't real (yet!)?  I can't be the only one who sometimes dreams of writing code and latter wonders where it went.  

[Sherlock 663]

@Brian Evans I'm betting that @Uwe Raabe is referring to this https://www.uweraabe.de/Blog/2014/09/09/the-garbled-path-variable/

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

24 minutes ago, Brian Evans said:

Private repo or something you made in your sleep

The former one. I was pretty sure I made that public a while ago, so that may indeed fall under the dream thing.