Nick Let a cat out of the bag…
Nick Hodges (The Delphi Product Manager) doesn’t usually talk about C++, but he mentioned something that I was eager to talk about.
Those of you who don’t read borland.public.delphi.non-technical (and maybe even some of you who do) could have easily missed a jewel buried in this thread:
<http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delphi.non-technical/browse_thread/thread/3898a5f36255b98c/d6e21acf04fbd49#7d6e21acf04fbd49> or
<http://tinyurl.com/yls9ru>
Where Nick says:
>Lance R. wrote:
>> Does Delphi 2006 (BDS) support Pre-build / Post-build event command
>> line actions like VS2005 does?
>
> No, but the next release of Delphi will, as it will use MSBuild as the
> build engine.
and then later in the thread:
> If by "Macros" you mean MSBuild Actions, then since we use MSBuild,
> you’ll be able to use any and all MS Actions in your build.
>
>> I assume this would be for VCL as well as the .NET side?
>
> Yes, even C++, something MS wasn’t able to do.
What does this mean to us C++ developers?
- A small dig against the competition.
- Extremely configurable build system.
- No more messing around with bdsproj2mak/bpr2mak.
- Identical results when building from IDE and the command line.
- Much faster builds in the IDE. (IDE sometimes faster than command line)
I’ll blog some more about the above in the future, but I didn’t want you guys to miss hearing about this.
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Posted by David Dean on January 15th, 2007 under Uncategorized |10 Responses to “Nick Let a cat out of the bag…”
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January 15th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Thanks for sharing that. I’ve got mixed feelings about it though.
1. Borland has been in the IDE business for years, is should have had a build system in place for years. The fact that it is just getting around to it now (by using a competitors) is just lame.
2. Nice that you can use it with C++. (or perhaps I’m not understanding). VC can do that as well, so what is the dig against the competition?
Since I am here, a couple of suggestions.
1. I used to like the way break on watched data worked. It no longer does and you must go to the breakpoint window in order to set it up. Before a right click on the watch window would bring up a menu, where one of the items was something like "break on change".
2. VC has a nice feature in that code that is ifdef’d out is gray. It makes it much easier to understand what code is active with the current defines.
January 15th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
It’s kind of ironic that you would take a jab at Microsoft, considering that you are building upon their innovation/development (MSBuild) instead of developing your own.
If CodeGear’s strategy is to just adopt Microsoft-developed technology, rather than to innovate and develop their own, then doesn’t that just send a signal to CodeGear customers that maybe they should be buying Microsoft tools instead anyway? This is true especially when you consider the technology lag using CodeGear tools. In the example of MSBuild, that is something that Microsoft has had already for a long time, and it is still a future release for CodeGear. Same goes for C# support, .NET 2.0, Vista SDKs, etc. When will CodeGear lead again, instead of just following?
Disclaimer: I’m not an employee of Microsoft (or CodeGear!). I’m an independent developer that used Turbo Pascal, then Delphi, then C++Builder, but finally switched to Visual C# because I got sick of waiting for Borland to fix C++Builder.
January 15th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Chris, There was an existing build system, but it was specific to C++. Another of the advantages for using MSBuild was to use the same build system for all the personalities of the IDE.
AIUI, VC isn’t using MSBuild in the IDE for C++. Maybe it is just the build ordering and build events that aren’t available in VC.
I do like your suggestions. Are they in QC?
January 15th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Tom, when I said dig, I meant it in a teasing way, not as a slam. Again, AIUI, we acheived something with MSBuild that Microsoft does not supply for their C++ customers. (They may in the future)
<br>
CodeGear hasn’t released any products yet, so it is too early to say that we aren’t innovating.
January 15th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
"AIUI, VC isn’t using MSBuild in the IDE for C++"
Maybe because it is just a makefile in XML ?
If CodeGear had taken jam/bjam a step further I would have been impressed.
Sorry to be negative, but just adopting a competitors product does not make me say geee…
January 16th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Codegear is right to adopt existing solutions. I feel the ant/nant/msbuild wheel has been reinvented often enough now. Reusing a perfectly fine solution will free up resources for quality control and real innovation.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:42 am
QC 38808
QC 38809
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Can someone post a url with the relevant MSBuild licensing agreement and re-distribution agreement?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
MSBuild is part of the .NET 2.0 framework:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480237.aspx
January 24th, 2007 at 10:24 am
bdsproj2mak does not support user define build tools. bpr2mak works well. %outputpath% is not ok. %bds% is not ok.