Synopse Open Source

We did some cleaning in the mORMot official RoadMap.
Now feature requests tickets will detail all to-do items we would like to implement.

Current framework RoadMap and implementation is in fact going into a pragmatic direction.
No need to make all framework's unit compatible at once: so we introduced some client-dedicated units, without any dependency on SynCommons.pas.

We would like to implement (in this order):

• Cross-platform clients (Delphi FMX, SmartMobileStudio, FPC) [09ae8513eb] [168eb753e5] [d7e5521da5];
• MVC web support [bd94c11ab1];
• Cross-platform server via FPC [3a79adc10f];
• Event-driven features [aa230e5299].

The CrossPlatform folder already contains units which compile under all Delphi compilers (VCL and FMX), and FPC.

But perhaps we would move the server to Linux, either via FPC, or using Delphi itself!

After more than 5 years of opening some huge part of Delphi code base, just my two cents.

Free software means free as a bird.

In practice, most Open Source "consumers" focus on free as a free beer...
This is a reality, especially for "niche" projects like developing libraries for Delphi.

Here are some thoughts from my little experiment with mORMot.
If you ask what Open Source for libraries mean, it may help you!

When I first read the technical white paper covering all of the language changes in XE4 for mobile development (tied to the new ARM LLVM-based Delphi compiler), I have to confess I was pretty much confused.

Two great mORMot users just asked for XE4/iOS support of mORMot.

Win32/Win64 support for XE4 will be done as soon as we got a copy of it.
I suspect the code already works, since it was working as expected with XE3, and we rely on our own set of low-level functions for most internal work.

But iOS-targetting is more complex, due to the NextGen compiler, mainly.

In Delphi, you have several ways of handling data life time, therefore several ways of handling memory:

• For simple value objects (e.g.  byte integer double shortstring and fixed size arrays or record containing only such types), the value is copied in fixed-size buffers;
• For more complex value objets (e.g. string and dynamic arrays or record containing such types), there is a reference counter handled by each instance, with copy-on-write feature and compiler-generated reference counting at code scope level (with hidden try..finally blocks);
• For most class instances (e.g. deriving from TObject), you have to Create then Free each instance, and manage its life time by hand - with explicit try..finally blocks;
• For class deriving from TInterfacedObject, you have a RefCount property, with _AddRef _Release methods (this is the reference-counted COM model), and you can use Delphi interface to work with such instances - see this blog article.

I'm a long-time registered user of Total Commander.

This tool is my daily file manager. I never use Windows Explorer, since Total Commander is just faster, more easy to use (especially with the keyboard), has a lot of plug-ins. I even created my own plug-ins to access some custom file formats, and navigate into them just like with any folder. And it includes a lot of well written commands for FTP access or file comparison, which made other tools (like WinMerge) unnecessary.

There is a new beta version of Total Commander available, which targets Windows 64 bit. I just thought: 'Whoo, this is a real-world Delphi XE2 64 application'. I downloaded and tried it. Worked as expected, and integrates seamlessly with Windows Seven (for the shell extensions). Then I took a look at the executable... and discovered it was not compiled with Delphi XE2... but with FPC !

Since we are still waiting for a Delphi 64 bit compiler, the only available solution to access a 64 bit library from an application written in Object pascal, is to use the 64 bit version of the FreePascal Compiler.

But you just can not recompile your VCL/GUI based Delphi application with FPC:

• Some low-level part of your code may not be directly compatible with a 64 bit process (e.g. since the pointer size changed);
• The GUI part of the application can not be ported directly with FPC - the Lazarus project try to be as close as possible to VCL, but it can be a very difficult, either impossible if you use some third-party components.

There will be an upcoming 64 bits Delphi compiler. Embarcadero promised it.

Here are some points on how you could make your code ready to compile under FPC 64 bits, therefore (I hope) under future Delphi 64 bits compiler.