Delphi 2009 COM/ActiveX Type Library support stability

Question

Referring to TLB and maintenance issues ...

My question to people (often) using the new COM/ActiveX type library support in Delphi 2009:
How stable is the implementation?

Especially, I'm interested in: adding/deleting classes, changing GUIDs, renaming methods/properties, reordering methods/properties, huge type libraries (50+ classes), ...

Is it as stable as in Delphi 2007 (a nightmare) or Delphi 7 (quite OK, but sometimes you have to restore the TLB file from SVN) or super-stable (as in, ... uhm, .... do you remember any Delphi version)?

EDIT: Yes, of course, the text RIDL was an excellent idea, but my question is:
Is the (new) implementation of the TLB support stable (especially synchronization of the RIDL file with the visual TLB editor and the implementation classes when doing the tasks I described above).

Answer 1

have a look at type-libraries-in-delphi

Answer 2

My understanding is that the RIDL is stored as text and compiled as it is needed so maintaining the TLB file directly is no longer necessary. This is a brilliant move by the CodeGear team to greatly improve stability.

Will it handle your mega sized type library? Hard to say as I don't have anything close to that large...but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't.

Answer 3

Well, again, I'm biased, but our internal testing indicates that the new solution is much, much, much more stable.

And of course it was designed to be. All the 'intelligence' of your COM/ActiveX objects is now text based. And since it is text based, it is completely under your control. Since it is under your control, you can make it do what you want. No more black boxes. The process is transparent. As for importing big, hairy Type Libraries, we successfully import the whole MS Office type libraries and ActiveX controls, and those are pretty hairy.

So from where we sit the answer to your question is: Yes, it is very stable.