JVCL 2.10 and Delphi 2010

Question

Did you try using JVCL 2.10 with Delphi 2010? I have Delphi 7 project that heavily uses DB components from that library and want to move it to new Delphi. I know that migration from JVCL 2.10 to newest JVCL version will be very problematic, so it would be better if Delphi 2010 worked with 2.10. do you have any experience?

Answer 1

I migrated a Delphi 5 application upwards to Delphi 2009 (and I'm sure it would compile for 2010), including changing to the latest version of the JVCL. It was most likely less painful than attempting to fix all of the libraries that I used. Most of the changes were extremely minor, fixing up events which changed in their declaration (but for the most part stayed the same). A few places I had to change from length(string) to Length(String)*SizeOf(Char). If you start with a project with no warnings ... or known warnings you can compare against, then work your way to eliminate all of them in Delphi 2010.

My suggestion is to install VMWare Workstation or VirtualPC, install Delphi 2010 there and do your port separate from your existing development environment. Make frequent backups (or extend your file backup in Delphi Editor Options to 99 and save often) and experiment a little. The history tab is fantastic at allowing you to roll back to a previous version or to compare what WAS working in the last version.

Answer 2

JVCL supplies a converter utility which will search all Delphi source files and convert class names and other straightforward string conversions for you. They also supply "scripts" for this converter to move from older JVCL versions, as well as from libraries that they've absorbed over time (like rxlib). I found it to be fairly straightforward, and even used their converter with some of my own scripts to remove dependencies on some libraries I'd like to eliminate from the project I'm upgrading.