Setting up the Qt library

A friend of Lite Applications recently asked if Delphi Distiller would support C++Builder in a future. This surprised me, because I used to think that no one used C++Builder any more, especially since the introduction of Visual C++ Express, which is an amazing quality development tool and is free.

But we know how that there can be many reasons why a developer uses a certain product instead of the other. Sometimes we have legacy code to maintain and we can't afford to port it to a better environment. Other times we are just unaware of our options. Both are understandable, even the latter. After all, we can't spend our lives researching every new crap that this crazy industry releases every year to deprecate it one year later.

In an attempt to find stability, sometimes we stick to what was good in the past. I'm guilty of this too. Those of us who lived in an era when Borland was the king of innovation in development tools keep very special memories in our hearts. Then the endless faith of loyal users is probably what kept Borland alive in the last decade, making mistake after mistake but never dying. Thankfully I'm through with that and ready to move on.

But enough with this ranting. The purpose of this post is to show how Visual C++ and the Qt library are a great alternative to C++Builder.

Visual C++ doesn't need much presentation. It is the most popular C++ compiler for Windows and produces native 32-Bit and 64-Bit code. Comes in several editions: Express, Standard, Professional, etc. The Express edition is free and it is has everything we need for Qt development.

The Qt library is the best widget toolkit available today, and its documentation is simply legendary. It isn't just a widget toolkit, in fact it is so complete that it practically wraps the whole operating system API. This allows the creation of cross platform native applications that can be recompiled on Windows, Linux or Mac. The Qt library is free and open source, and can be used on commercial and closed source projects. It can be linked static or dinamically. The default behaviour is to link dinamically, but you can rebuild the library for static (it takes around 3 hours on a regular computer). There is official documentation on how to do this.

Regarding the IDE, basically we have two options: use Visual Studio 2008 or use the Qt Creator IDE.

Option 1: Using Visual Studio 2008

This is the easiest option, but it isn't free (in theory).

· Install Visual Studio 2008 if you have it, or download the trial version (you can then register it with a good serial if you wish).

· Install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

· Install the Qt Framework for VS 2008.

· Install the Visual Studio Add-in.

That's all. We now have a VS 2008 IDE that allows us to create Qt applications and even design forms visually, just like in Delphi or C++Builder.

Option 2: Using the Qt Creator IDE

This option requires a few more steps but the result is just as good and it is completely free.

The Qt Creator is an excellent IDE made by the creators of Qt. It is very well thought out and a pleasure to use. This is what I'm using right now to port Delphi Distiller to C++ as an intermediate step until a Qt binding is available for the Go language.

The IDE needs a compiler, and in this case we could use the MinGW compiler available with the Qt SDK, but the Microsoft C++ compiler is faster and better, so we will use this compiler instead.

· Install Visual Studio 2008 if you have it or Visual C++ 2008 Express (we won't use the IDE, we just want its compiler for use by Qt Creator).

· Install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 if you need to (Visual C++ Express doesn't need it because it comes with the SP1 integrated).

· Install the Qt Framework for VS 2008.

· Install Qt Creator.

· Run Qt Creator. On the next step we will tell Qt Creator to use the Microsoft compiler, so we need to make sure that it will be able to find the Microsoft tool set. For this reason, I recommend running Qt Creator from the Visual Studio Command Prompt, located in the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition" group of the Start menu.

· Now let's go to the "Tools" menu, "Options...", "Qt4" node, "Qt Versions" node. Here we specify where the Qt library is, and select MSVC 9.0 as our compiler. We can also rebuild the Debugging Helper. Finally click OK.

That's all. We are now ready to make Qt applications and even design forms visually, just like in Delphi or C++Builder.

Other considerations

If you are a Delphi developer you are probably also a C++ hater. I can't blame you. C++ is a bad language in many ways. But thankfully Qt makes an awesome job of enhancing the language and uses it wisely, so you don't need to know a lot of C++ to program with Qt. Just read the Qt tutorials and examples included in its wonderful documentation and you will be good to go.

NOTE: It is technically possible to use Qt in the Visual C++ Express IDE, but it is tricky. You would need to manually set the include and library paths and tweak the project options so that it invokes the Qt Meta-Object Compiler just before every compile. And there is no official documentation on how to do this. So I wouldn't recommend it.

Google Go, language of the year 2009

Google Go, released in November 2009, is the programming language that gained most market share in the whole year.

Congratulations and a big Thank You to Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson for coming up with something that the developer community had been demanding for more than a decade.

Source: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Next step: wipe Java from the face of the Earth.

Delphi Distiller v1.85 released

New in this version:
+ Delphi 2010 Update 4/5 unprotected permanently.
- To make things less confusing, Delphi 2010 Update 2/3 is not supported any more.

CRC32: 828E10E0
MD5: 207992917fbd49d5fcb05d74f4d63d00

Download from IsoHunt.

Embarcadero, working hard to become as unpopular as Borland

I was browsing the net today and people on a forum were commenting that Turbo Delphi Explorer wasn't available for download any more. I wanted to see that with my own eyes, so I headed to turboexplorer.com and found this:

Turbo Delphi 2006, Turbo C++ 2006, and JBuilder Turbo 2008 are no longer available. You can download a free 30-day trial version of the latest Delphi, C++Builder, and JBuilder products and learn more about them using the links below.

For those who are new to Delphi (hard to imagine, but I guess that there might be some new users), Turbo Delphi Explorer was a slightly crippled version of Delphi 2006 that Borland made available for free. It was like the regular Delphi but without command line tools, and you could not install third party stuff in the IDE (but you could create and use third party components in code). So it included the VCL source code, you could create database applications and could even make commercial projects with it. It was a very nice offer, especially when you think that this came from the late Borland (the bad one, who didn't care about developers and firmly believed that the future was in ALM tools --I'm glad that they finally went down the drain along with their ALM crap).

So if you wanted to learn Delphi or start a small business and you didn't have a thousand dollars to spend on a copy of Delphi you could just download Turbo Delphi and do real work with it. At a later time, if you needed maximum productivity or just loved to have a palette full of components, you could buy the regular Delphi. This made sense but, did it help increase Delphi sales? Probably not. Did it hurt? Probably not either. As usual, Borland marketing was nonexistent, nobody knew that Turbo Delphi existed, and if they did they didn't care, because no one likes to use products from a company that has been slowly dying since the end of the nineties.

When Borland, in a decisive step towards ALM glory, got rid of the Developer Tools Group, many people had big hopes that Embarcadero would be the home that Delphi had always needed. I kinda doubted it. When I saw that the same bunch of people that had been managing Delphi under the Borland name were now in Embarcadero, I suspected that everything would stay more or less the same. Except that I didn't expect that Embarcadero would kill the Turbo Explorer downloads.

Go compiler can generate Windows executables now

Up until now, the Go compiler only targeted Linux, FreeBSD, Mac, and NativeClient.

A revision committed today makes it possible to produce Windows executables. The revision applies specifically to 8l, the x86 linker.

More details:
http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=1282de9807c604c9cff553fa2ce668a7e23d23e0

What is Delphi Distiller

Delphi Distiller is a customization tool for Delphi 5/6/7/2006/2007/2009/2010 that allows you manage packages and experts and apply several tweaks.

FEATURES

• Choose what packages and experts are loaded by Delphi 5/6/7/2006/2007/2009/2010.

• Download links for Delphi 5/6/7/2006/2007/2009/2010.

• File associations manager for Delphi 5/6/7/2006/2007/2009/2010.

• Delphi 5 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .cfg files.
- Use Tahoma font by default.
- Don't show splash screen.
- Customize editor colors.

• Delphi 6 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .ddp files.
- Don't create .cfg files.
- Use Tahoma font by default.
- Don't show splash screen.

• Delphi 7 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .ddp files.
- Don't create .cfg files.
- Use Tahoma font by default.
- Don't show splash screen.

• Delphi 2006 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .local files.
- Don't create .cfg files.
- Remove toolbar gradients.
- Fix TabStop bug in TFrame's.
- Don't show splash screen.
- Remove Delphi 2006 license check.

• Delphi 2007 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .local files.
- Disable MSBuild.
- Don't load additional .NET crap.
- Remove toolbar gradients.
- Don't show splash screen.
- Remove Delphi 2007 license check.

• Delphi 2009 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .local files.
- Don't load additional .NET crap.
- Button to clear all Embarcadero licenses.
- Remove Delphi 2009 license check.

• Delphi 2010 tweaks:
- Don't create .~bpl files.
- Don't create .local files.
- Don't load additional .NET crap.
- Button to clear all Embarcadero licenses.
- Remove Delphi 2010 license check.