[Mono-devel-list] Borland Delphi 2005 Suport

[Willibald Krenn]

[Chrome]
> Note: I've never used it, and I don't like Pascal enough to try it, but
> it was recently announced on this mailing list...

Both, Marc Hoffman and Carlo Kok (who did innerfuse pascal script 
before) work for RemObjects - that is the company behind Chrome.

IOW: It's quite understandable IMO that Mr. Hoffman has a point in 
discouraging a Borland-Support-Lib for mono.
I've never tried Chrome: AFAIK it's incompatible to Delphi, but has some 
nice syntax extensions. (As I understand it supports design by contract 
- but I could be wrong.)
Main point however is that (full) support for Delphi 2005 would mean 
support of the Visual Component Library (.Net version). For this, Mono 
needs a working GUI layer first (probably WMF)..

To my knowledge some simple command line Delphi.NET (9) applications 
already run on mono. However, - AFAIK - Delphi's concept of metaclasses 
(which is not found in C#, C++, Java) needs some custom assembly that is 
linked to the Delphi.NET application.
If you need more information about the compiler/runtime pieces, Mr. 
Thorpe would be the right person to contact at borland.

BTW: I fear all the enterprise level stuff that comes with Delphi 2005 
Architect will be impossible to support - unless these features are not 
P/Invoke dependant..

Other than that, support of small Delphi.NET applications would be 
interesting IMO.

Willi
-- 
Who has burned his fingers with Kylix 1,2,3