I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about the next version of Delphi, apparently called “XE2.”
Some of these rumors can be confirmed because they’ve come from people at Embarcadero who we can consider reliable. Others are from less authoritative sources. Here are a few that I’ve heard:
From folks at Embarcadero:
- Delphi XE2 will create apps for Win32, Win64, and Mac OS X from the same source code (source).
- Delphi XE2 will create apps for iOS (iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches) by exporting an XCode project that can be compiled on your mac (using Free Pascal) (source with video).
- Delphi XE2 will do all of this with a new platform called “FireMonkey” (source).
From outside Embarcadero:
- FireMonkey is vector-based and skinnable, and takes full advantage of the GPU (source)
- Firemonkey is, in fact, the evolution VGScene and DXScene which Embarcadero acquired when they bought KSDev and hired its programmer (source).
- I was talking to someone in an IRC chat a couple weeks ago who attended one of the “World Tour” events, and he said that XE2 will do Android as well as iOS, though I haven’t seen mention of that on any of the official blogs, so I’m considering that to be nothing but unsubstantiated rumor at this point.
Personally, I’m excited about the idea of writing single-source applications that run on multiple platforms, especially Windows and Mac. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be as simple as just recompiling your venerable VCL app for Mac. Hopefully the changes are only in the presentation parts of the VCL, and our business logic will be reusable while we have to rewrite our user interfaces. I guess we’ll see when we actually get our hands on XE2 (or if anyone who knows better wants to chime in here).
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dude, where were you been?
http://www.embarcadero.com/
But Castalia has a very, very rare updates and bug fixes
I’m not sure I would call quarterly “rare,” but thanks for the feedback.
Bug fixes should be immediate or very fast, but … are quarterly :/
As far as I understood, Firemonkey is not the actual means by which xplat is delivered but “merely” one of the first tools in the package that takes full advantage of it.
Android: XE2 will NOT do Android
As I understand it, the intention and hope is that Android (and Linux) support will be in some sort of deliverable state for XE3, whether that be as fully finished and polished as the current Win32/Win64/OSX support or perhaps in the same “Preview” state as the XE2 support for iOS.
FireMonkey is not a cross-platform, uh, platform.
It is merely a cross-platform UI toolkit/control framework. It builds upon the existing, non-visual elements of the VCL (excluding obviously any parts of the VCL which specifically encapsulate platform specific implementation details).
The means by which Delphi has achieved cross-platform capability is in the compiler. FireMonkey is in turn then able to be cross platform because it is 100% ObjectPascal and incorporates a platform independent rendering model that is able to use hardware accelerated API’s appropriate to each platform (Direct2D/3D on Windows, OpenGL on OSX/iOS)
The [existing, visual] VCL cannot be made cross-platform due to it’s very tight binding to the Windows API and Windows Window Manager model (or rather, not without going down the same blind alley that Kylix ventured down).
It is worth noting that the original plan was to do exactly that – try to devise a cross-platform VCL. Thankfully the realisation dawned that the result would be the same messy compromise that was arrived at with Kylix, and so instead the decision was taken to offer a compelling NEW GUI toolkit for cross-platform, and maintain the VCL as a specifically Windows platform (Win32 AND Win64).
I for one applaud that decision.
You are right. With FireMonkey you only need to rewrite your user interfaces and you can reuse your existing non-visual code, including a possibility to add existing data modules to your FireMonkey apps.
XE2 looks like it is going to be the most significant release of Delphi since version 1!