Question: is there any chance Embarcadero would reconsider and stop blocking the use of the command line compilers for Starter Edition?

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Question: is there any chance Embarcadero would reconsider and stop blocking the use of the command line compilers for Starter Edition?

I run an open source project that uses Delphi at https://github.com/keymanapp/keyman, and a big hurdle to getting people interested is the complexity of getting an initial build of the Delphi projects. A command line build is pretty standard for anything other than the simplest projects, and pretty much a prerequisite for many open source developers used to CLI environments.

I know we could do a .groupproj, but that's a hassle to manage as well and a lot less robust than command line compiles.

We have Professional licenses for all our developers and this would not impact our use of the Professional Edition, but it certainly makes it harder for others to get involved in the project.

Comments

  1. Andrea RaimondiAugust 10, 2017 at 1:01 AM

    Mate, in 2017 we still do not have remote database connections in the PRO edition... come on now, be serious.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dan Statham (GreatDayDan)August 10, 2017 at 1:02 AM

    /sub

    ReplyDelete
  3. A. BouchezAugust 10, 2017 at 2:43 AM

    Andrea Raimondi you have third party components , even some for free

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marco CantùAugust 10, 2017 at 2:47 AM

    I'd say there is a chance, yes. It was done to prevent abuse...

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  5. Marc DurdinAugust 10, 2017 at 3:59 AM

    Marco Cantù that's encouraging :) What sort of abuse were you experiencing?

    ReplyDelete
  6. raudus web frameworkAugust 10, 2017 at 4:26 AM

    Andrea Raimondi​ check Driver ZeosLib and server REST PHP. to remote database

    https://youtu.be/Qk_2c4G4Bn0

    ReplyDelete
  7. Andrea RaimondiAugust 10, 2017 at 5:07 AM

    That is completely missing the point. Up to the early 2000s, a server setup would cost $X money and only higher-end customers would have it. It is why MS Access was so popular.

    HOWEVER: from then, everything changed. VPS now come for peanuts and many homes have more than one computer. Such restriction is pointless. One of the distinctive sides of Delphi has always been that each restriction would have a technical reason.

    What they are doing now is two-fold:
    1) Customer profiling: extracting revenue from where they can
    2) Pushing customers up the chain: they use FireDAC as a lead-in to buy Enterprise copies.

    See, the mobile pack is an entirely different story, because that is - by all means - an "add-on", i.e. something that you don't necessarily work with and, as such, it makes sense to have excluded.

    That is my point, along with the terms and conditions to get on "Get It" where they will flat out refuse to include ZeosDBO because it lets PRO users connect to remote dbs.

    It is ridicolous and it should change.

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  8. T n T (Kryvich)August 10, 2017 at 5:33 AM

    The starter edition is adequate for amateurs and students to get into Delphi programming. Although the question of the topic starter can be easily solved by adding some new command line parameters to bds.exe, for ex.
    bds.exe myproject.dpr -build -close

    ReplyDelete
  9. Marc DurdinAugust 10, 2017 at 5:53 AM

    T n T there are already command line options to do a build for bds.exe (-ns -b). There are some limitations to using them. See https://github.com/keymanapp/keyman/blob/master/windows/src/buildtools/devtools/DevDelphiStarterCompileWrapper.pas for how we currently use bds.exe to do the build. However, loading a heavy GUI development environment to do a command line compile is unnecessarily constrained (e.g. no build options can be set), slow and intrusive.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Marc DurdinAugust 11, 2017 at 12:02 AM

    Marco Cantù can I put feedback into quality.embarcadero.com - System Dashboard - Embarcadero Technologies or somewhere like that in order to surface this request more 'formally'?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Marco CantùAugust 11, 2017 at 7:55 AM

    Sure, if you add a Feature Request in Quality Portal this is a good way to track it for both sides

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thach NgoAugust 13, 2017 at 12:15 AM

    I wish Delphi has these versions:
    - Free $0.00 (As current Starter)
    - Basic $199 (Win 32 + Win64 + Command Line tool + Refactor tool + RTL Source code + Local database access tool (SQLITE, MS ACCESS)). This version for open source mans or developers who use Delphi for fun only.
    - Pro $999 (Basic version + MacOS + database access component for MySQL, Posgresql, Firebird, Interbase)
    - Enterprise + Architect (as current)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Marc DurdinAugust 14, 2017 at 12:01 AM

    Thanks Marco, I have opened this as a New Feature in QP: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-18821

    ReplyDelete

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