A new blog on the horizon...

I thought I let you know, that the first all-German blog on Borlands blog server has arrived. Matthias Eissing, the Delphi Evangelist for Germany, Austria and Switzerland has started his, finally. Let's hope for some interesting entries and not to many disappearing texts ;-)

Go visit his blog: Matthias Eissing

It is there, but the BDS installer requires the .NET SDK 1.1

I have read a few accounts where the installer of the Borland Delphi Studio does not allow to install the Borland Developer Studio, because it expects the Microsoft .NET SDK 1.1 to be installed. Yet, looking into the list of installed applications, it is listed just fine - and it works as well.

Today one user found the reason for it, which may well give the standard solution to this problem. You can install the MS .NET SDK without installing the .NET Framework itself. Thus, the prerequisits installer will install the .NET Framework, but not the SDK again. Yet, the installation of the SDK will be a little different, then when installing it after the .NET Framework and this difference will lead the BDS installer to the assumption that it is not correctly installed.

Solution: simply uninstall the complete MS .NET SDK and reinstall it and you should be ready to go.

Minimum Requirements for the BDS

Over and over again I see questions like: do I really need Windows XP Professional to run the Borland Developer Studio 2006 (or 2005). It does say so on the packaging and the web site. I do use Windows XP Home and would like to stay with it.

While I cannot understand why one would prefer the Home edition, except being on the short side of money, I can answer the question. You can install, run, and use the Borland Developer Studio 2006 (and 2005) on your Windows XP Home edition, however, you should be aware, that you cannot use all functions of the software. Most obviously you will not be able to use the Microsoft Internet Information Server (MS IIS) support built into the Borland Developer Studio. The MS IIS is not part of Windows XP Home and cannot be installed upon it (at least officially). However, for testing purposes, Borland does deliver the Casini web server together with the Developer Studio. Most functions you can test within Casini on XP Home. So, if you do not need to worry about IIS specific development, go ahead and use the Borland Developer Studio on your Windows XP Home desktop.

Note: There may be other functions within the Borland Developer Studio 2006 (and/or 2005) that may rely on functions, that are part of Windows XP Professional, but not included in the Home edition. However, at this point I am not aware of them. Any purchasing decisions are based on your own risk ;-) Check out the trial edition first.

Did you save your Delphi files...

and all those others?

Well, when looking for a new back up utility I came across a free solution named SyncToy, which is offered from Microsoft.

SyncToy is really easy to use. Simply select the source and the destination folder, the "sync method" and you are ready to go.

• Synchronize synchronizes both folders with each other
• Echo writes all changes to the destination folder
• Subscribe pulls all changes from the destination folder, if the local folder has the files already
• Contribute pushes all changes and new files to the destination, but leaves deleted files intact. Good for your digi-cam images
• Combine copies new and updated files both ways, but leaves renamed and deleted files intact.

Best is, you can automate it, so it runs every night and backups your software to another storage ;)

06 | EuroDevCon and EKON 10

The summer has arrived in the nothern hemisphere, not to say that some people would rather see the cooler times again. However, as we do near the end of summer the German Entwicklerkonferenz (Developers Conference) EKON 10 comes up on our schedule. This year it is paired together with Borlands EuroDevCon. Basically the same admission prices, the same schedule and the same speakers.

So I hope to see you there.
Official EKON 10 web site: www.entwicklerkonferenz.de
Official 06 | EuroDevCon web site: www.eurodevcon.com

Great, Shenoy! Good job!

Deepak Shenoy has posted a great article on creating live templates for the current BDS IDE. The template features an auto-PInvoke code generator for both, C# and Delphi.NET. For Delphi.NET he uses BabelCode in the background for translating his C# code to Delphi.NET.

The source code is available for download at Borlands CodeCentral.

BDS Documentation Reloaded...

Well, just in case you didn't see the article on BDN: the technical documentation team is asking for your input on how you would improve the help system which comes with the "DTG" Developer Studio.

Go ahead and submit your suggestions!

And I am sure you do agree that the help needs improvements!