Updating to latest version of Delphi, of a large project. Wanted: the good, the bad and the ugly

General Help
1

Hi,
Currently we are on Delphi 10.1 Berlin and I have been tasked to find out what would be required to go to the latest version, Delphi 11.1 Alexandria. Windows application (nothing to do with FireMonkey)

What I am looking for is the good (fixes/improvements), the bad (the regression issues), and most importantly, the ugly (breaking changes).

I am going to have a look at List of Delphi language features and version in which they were introduced/deprecated - Stack Overflow to see what’s new (except Tokyo that goes to Alexandria’s changes), changed, etc but like all documentation, things are missed (or not even documented) and this is where I am you to help me out, please…

Cheers,
Nick

2

I wish it were so easy to quantify the pros & cons of upgrading - the reality is the answer is it depends.

I migrated FinalBuilder from XE7 to 11.1 (with missteps on 10.3 and 10.4.x along the way) - it’s measurably faster, but then I have also done a lot of refactoring and some profiling - so can’t point to anything specific.

My main reason for upgrading was for high dpi… which sadly is still a work in progress. 11.1 is better than 10.4.2 (which was terrible) and 11.0 (which didn’t fix some major issues) - but still your milage will vary. Third party controls will be a big factor - I spent a lot of time working on those (some that I use the vendors have folded).

There are still serious design flaws in the high dpi support, especially around font scaling, and the use of integers introduces rounding errors (move a form back and forth between monitors and which it change size gradually). The handling of images is another issue - I had thought switching to svg would solve that, but that just brought other issues - wasted a lot of time on that before switching back to bitmaps. If you have a lot of images (like in FinalBuilder, where there are a few thousand) plan to spend a lot of time on that.

Or just ignore high dpi altogether (something I wish I had done) and reduce your stress levels.

As for quality, well with every release of Delphi you get bug fixes, and new bugs. When their jira instance is working, spend some time researching the open reports there.

Good luck.

3

Nick, I have just upgraded to Rad 11.1, for the reason that I have to write for bloody Android 11, to my horror and dismay. No problems with Delphi - except that it won’t recognise my phone (samsung s22), though Delphi 10.3 and 10.4 do. Because of this I went looking for any patches, and found a recommended one, Patch.R110.November-20211124.zip. Don’t touch it with a ten foot pole! It has completely screwed up Rad 11.1, such that I am going to have to uninstal and reinstal it completely. I don’t know if this is my failing or the system’s, but I am not happy!
Chester.

4

That’s not a patch for 11.1 - which was only released in March this year. I don’t believe any patches for 11.1 have actually been released yet.

5

Thank you, Vince! No wonder it completely :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: my system! I could not uninstal 11.1 - had to manually delete everything, re-instal (which hung), then uninstal again (worked this time) and am in the process of re-installing! What a circus! And no warnings on the instal of the (wrong!!!) patch. Then I will see if 11.1 can recognise my phone this time. Sigh! Have a good day.
Chester.