Delphi compiler need to be opensourced

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

Regardless of closed or open source - the Delphi Windows compilers and debuggers need a significant overhaul - not to mention the insight background "compiling"  - which IMO just as well could be using the actual compiler and background compilation.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

11 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

That's surely not a problem with LLVM per se, rather the Delphi compiler on top of LLVM?

Core issue is in LLVM https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269 

 

While in theory it would be possible to address this issue from Delphi side, it is probably as hard as solving it on LLVM side for the similar reasons. 

 

The most prominent issue is in capturing exceptions raised from accessing nil references, and addressing this particular use case would probably be simpler than all encompassing solution. However, I am not in position to say how easy or hard would be to implement this kind of fix in Delphi compiler.

[RonaldK 18]

10 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Core issue is in LLVM https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269 

 

While in theory it would be possible to address this issue from Delphi side, it is probably as hard as solving it on LLVM side for the similar reasons. 

Well, back to the title of this thread. Isn't LLVM open source and thus problems will be fixed better and faster? 

[Stefan Glienke 2002]

52 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

That's surely not a problem with LLVM per se, rather the Delphi compiler on top of LLVM?

It is: https://llvm.org/docs/ExceptionHandling.html

[Alexander Elagin 143]

Why choose LLVM? Maybe GCC backend handles exceptions better?

Edited April 9, 2019 by Alexander Elagin

[Guest]

I have idea,

before Delphi fail, buy Island LLVM from RemObjects, they have already a Delphi RTL compatible. Bind VCL and or FMX over it and have all OS, all platforms, clean, fast, perfect code.

Open source it as MS do with Roslyn?

Edited April 9, 2019 by Guest

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

13 minutes ago, RDPasqua said:

before Delphi fail, buy Island LLVM from RemObjects, they have already a Delphi RTL compatible. Bind VCL and or FMX over it and have all OS, all platforms, clean, fast, perfect code.

Without going into deep discussion about compatibility and other technical issues... AFAIK Marc Hoffman would rather drop dead than sell anything to Embarcadero... 

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

6 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

AFAIK Marc Hoffman would rather drop dead than sell anything to Embarcadero... 

[Fritzew 51]

4 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Without going into deep discussion about compatibility and other technical issues... AFAIK Marc Hoffman would rather drop dead than sell anything to Embarcadero... 

Yes that is for sure........
Remobjects shows what can be done with LLVM,  
working a lot with Elements these days. It is amazing what they have done with the language!

[Guest]

ok, we  can do a fund-raising project, buy Island, then will ask to Sergey to do a FMX similar layer over it, for windows, osx, android and ios.

I stop here else embarcadero will kill me 🙂

(just for fun)

[RonaldK 18]

1 hour ago, RDPasqua said:

... then will ask to Sergey to do a FMX similar layer over it, for windows, osx, android and ios.

... or do you mean Eugene (the father of FMX)?

 

I dont think that an open source Compiler or another Compiler makes it better. 

The current weakness of Delphi is the lack of a good development team behind Delphi.
In my view, the step away from the own development team was a fatal mistake.

[Larry Hengen 39]

On 4/8/2019 at 11:40 AM, Joseph MItzen said:

Isn't the core really the framework?

No the core is the compiler(s) without which they could not compile the IDE (back when it was Pure Pascal), or the VCL/FMX code.  Yes the VCL is also a large piece of intellectual property that anchors developers to the platform.  Unfortunately, FMX dies not seem to be as ubiquitous as the VCL.  Perhaps open sourcing that framework would be a catalyst to building a bigger community of third party vendors and developers and keeping pace with all the platforms as they change, but that is another topic.

[Larry Hengen 39]

On 4/8/2019 at 1:15 PM, AlekXL said:

And opensourcing the compiler does not mean EMBT loses it's exclusive copyright. Learn to read

I can read English just fine thank you.  I didn't mention anything about copyright.  That is a completely different issue as you likely know.  Copyright is hard and costly to enforce, especially so in nations which to not subscribe to the legal concept or enforce it, such as China.  Open sourcing the compiler would be tantamount to giving away the IP.

[AlekXL 8]

2 hours ago, Larry Hengen said:

I can read English just fine thank you.  I didn't mention anything about copyright.  That is a completely different issue as you likely know.  Copyright is hard and costly to enforce, especially so in nations which to not subscribe to the legal concept or enforce it, such as China.  Open sourcing the compiler would be tantamount to giving away the IP.

Please! What are you afraid of? What our Chinese brothers could possibly copycat? And for what end?  Currently there isn't  anything special in Delphi compiler itself. In the past, in  years of its youth and glory, yes, Delphi was a conceptual breakthrough.

Now? Everything was already reinvented and opensourced. FPC, Roslyn, LLVM, and many more already have most of features Delphi could boast. Implemented better (not old ANSI C), also.

 

It's a synergy of language, libraries (mostly VCL),  IDE and 3'd party libs/legacy code -- that gives Delphi an edge.  Actually  the weakest link of this synergy is compiler deficiency, I presume. Embarcadero is unable to maintain the compiler in a good shape, and this holding Delphi back so much.

 

For Delphi, and it's community It so little to loose and everything to gain..

Edited April 11, 2019 by AlekXL
typo

[farcodev 2]

39 minutes ago, AlekXL said:

Please! What are you afraid of? What our Chinese brothers could possibly copycat? And for what end?  Currently there isn't  anything special in Delphi compiler itself. In the past, in  years of its youth and glory, yes, Delphi was a conceptual breakthrough.

Now? Everything was already reinvented and opensourced. FPC, Roslyn, LLVM, and many more already have most of features Delphi could boast. Implemented better (not old ANSI C), also.

 

It's a synergy of language, libraries (mostly VCL),  IDE and 3'd party libs/legacy code -- that gives Delphi an edge.  Actually  the weakest link of this synergy is compiler deficiency, I presume. Embarcadero is unable to maintain the compiler in a good shape, and this holding Delphi back so much.

 

For Delphi, and it's community It so little to loose and everything to gain..

Like someone said on this thread, you can take the FPC / Lazarus way, it's an available and working "reinvented wheel".

Embarcadero is a company (an evil word for the OSS world) and if they want to keep their compiler closed-source it's their business.

 

And the old trope "open sourced software is better than closed-sourced only because it is open-source" is old and non factual.

I have nothing against the open source world, but the fanatism and SJWarriorism of these OSS communities bore me to no end, and it grown exponentially since the last 5-10 years.

Edited April 11, 2019 by farcodev

[Guest]

Mads Torgerson wrote about How Microsoft rewrote its C# compiler in C# and made it open source

 

And you should all remember that MS was at a point where "Linux (Open Source) is cancer".

(see Ballmer: 'Linux is a cancer' from June 2001)

Edited April 11, 2019 by Guest

[Joseph MItzen 251]

3 hours ago, farcodev said:

Like someone said on this thread, you can take the FPC / Lazarus way, it's an available and working "reinvented wheel".

Embarcadero is a company (an evil word for the OSS world) and if they want to keep their compiler closed-source it's their business.

 

And the old trope "open sourced software is better than closed-sourced only because it is open-source" is old and non factual.

I have nothing against the open source world, but the fanatism and SJWarriorism of these OSS communities bore me to no end, and it grown exponentially since the last 5-10 years. 

You're complaining about ideology in the open source community, but you used some stereotypes yourself. Today it is companies that are the key contributors to the Linux kernel, Red Hat is being purchased by IBM for $34 billion dollars, and companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft seem to be in a race to see who can release the most open source code. Open source isn't the enemy of companies; open source is often the reason many startup companies can exist. Open source (e.g. Linux, Apache, Hadoop, PostgreSQL, etc.) enable them to be competitive with much larger companies right away without the formerly massive amount they would have had to spend on software or years it would have taken to develop software internally. Open source is inescapable in the corporate world today (well, maybe in Embarcadero). The two go hand in hand. Heck, even Microsoft is now a member of the Linux Foundation!

 

I also don't see the open source community as having grown more ideological. They don't need to; they've won. On the one hand you've got Microsoft open sourcing most of C#, running Linux on Azure and porting SQL Server to Linux; on the other side you've got employers requesting applicants' Github accounts on job applications.

 

Meanwhile, the FreePascal crowd has vowed never to accept a patch for type inference. It's generally the smaller the group or less successful the cause that tends to bring out fanaticism.  "The fanatic is one whom, upon forgetting their purpose, redoubles their effort."

[Bill Meyer 337]

11 hours ago, AlekXL said:

Please! What are you afraid of? What our Chinese brothers could possibly copycat? And for what end?  Currently there isn't  anything special in Delphi compiler itself. In the past, in  years of its youth and glory, yes, Delphi was a conceptual breakthrough.

Combativeness is not a tool of persuasion. As to China, wake up and smell the tea. They plan to dominate us as soon as possible, and technology is at the heart of their interests.

[Ugochukwu Mmaduekwe 42]

While I feel it is not possible for Delphi to open source it's compiler, I highly doubt there are skilled personnels even willing to invest time to improve it for free.

The bitter truth is that unfortunately the Delphi ecosystem is not as friendly and lively as other languages ecosystem.

A glaring example is the availability of OpenSource libraries to achieve certain operations is no where as vast as that we have in C#, Java or even C++.

The VCL and RTL is a different story though.

[Anders Melander 1783]

1 hour ago, Bill Meyer said:

They plan to dominate us as soon as possible, ...

Didn't you mean to capitalize "US"?

And on that note I can't see how what China is trying to do is different from what the US is already doing to the rest of the world...

[Joseph MItzen 251]

2 hours ago, Anders Melander said:

Didn't you mean to capitalize "US"?

And on that note I can't see how what China is trying to do is different from what the US is already doing to the rest of the world...

The United States isn't actively planning to annex Taiwan, hasn't enabled a "Great Firewall" to control its citizens' access to the Internet, hasn't declared a President For Life, hasn't engaged in a worldwide scourge of industrial espionage, doesn't artificially devalue its currency to court manufacturing jobs, doesn't fill factories with prison labor, doesn't hold innocent Canadians hostage when one of its industrialists is arrested, hasn't instituted a nationwide biometric monitoring network, hasn't built a network of artificial islands in the South China Sea to prevent access, annex territory and be able to grab resources by military force, and isn't too inclined to run peaceful protestors with tanks. it's also not rolling all of this personal data into a nightmarish "social trustworthiness rating", designed to punish those not deemed sufficiently loyal to the state:

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-social-credit-system-flight-booking-blacklisted-beijing-points-a8646316.html?amp

 

The United States is the key country preventing China from extending its reach and enslaving other populaces or taking their territories.

[Anders Melander 1783]

3 minutes ago, Joseph MItzen said:

The United States isn't ...

I'm pretty sure many of the countries on the receiving end of US' forced friendship has a different view on that. Look to me like the US is actually also guilty of most of the issues you listed. I don't mind the US looking after its own interests, just don't pretend it's doing anything but that.

China is a complex issue. Sure it's bad in some areas, but it's slowly improving. It's a huge country and rapid change would cause the country to implode.

[Bill Meyer 337]

12 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

I'm pretty sure many of the countries on the receiving end of US' forced friendship has a different view on that. Look to me like the US is actually also guilty of most of the issues you listed. I don't mind the US looking after its own interests, just don't pretend it's doing anything but that.

China is a complex issue. Sure it's bad in some areas, but it's slowly improving. It's a huge country and rapid change would cause the country to implode.

History shows that the US looking after its own interests has had us paying most of the costs of defense for Europe since WWII. 

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

That said, this thread is wildly off topic, and I will write no more of this.

[David Heffernan 2345]

31 minutes ago, Bill Meyer said:

History shows that the US looking after its own interests has had us paying most of the costs of defense for Europe since WWII. 

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Those aren't facts though. If you are going to make a claim, back it up with credible evidence. Just because 45 said it, doesn't make it true. 

[Daniel 417]

Please come back to the original topic.

We startet with the Delphi-compiler and ended with WWII. 😕