Help with strange problems with Delphi 5 IDE

Question

Okay, I'm going down here. For the past (almost) four years, I feel very bad from my Delphi 5 IDE development environment. The problems include:

• Looks like random errors in coride50.bpl
• floating point errors during compilation
• random deletion of source code files
• changing the shape and size of objects between instances of work on them
• Loss of links between files in compilation: messages that cannot find a function, even if it is explicitly specified
• Valid .DFM files are often not included in the linker, unless full assembly is performed instead of smaller compilation.

The biggest problem is that my boss does not believe that this is happening without any changes to the users creating these problems. I have already wiped and restarted Delphi several times, but now I can’t do it again. Most of these problems can be easily repaired (either reloading the IDE or re-copying files from the control source), but these are completely nuts. I removed all warnings and hints from compilation time, did not close them. I did my best to follow Marco and Microsoft best practices. Is it just me? I'm crazy? How can I stop Delphi from getting these headaches anymore?

Answer 1

I have never seen a single version of Delphi files under any circumstances.

Are IDE plugins installed? This will be my first guess.

Answer 2

Pretty sure this is bad packaging. If you can come up with steps that are repeated more than once (which I know is difficult), try removing packages from third-party (or home) packages at a time until they are fixed. Then at least you know what package we are causing you.

Once you know what the nasty package is about, you can actually debug development-time code and component behavior in Delphi. Just install Delphi exe as a debugging application, and then Delphi will launch another instance of Delphi in debug mode. Repeat the steps that lead to the failure and hopefully you will understand which code in the package is causing the problem.

Good luck

Answer 3

I have never heard of similar behavior from Delphi. A few things to look at:

Are you sure the memory on your computer is good? Did you run Memtest? The last couple of times I came across crazy behavior from a car, the memory of which was the culprit.

Also, remember that everything you install in Delphi runs in the context of the IDE, and if it is buggy, it can ruin the IDE. Even a component that writes to a wild pointer can do this with you.

Answer 4

I used d5 for a long time and have never seen this. I had some other strange things, as you mention the need to build, not just compile. I have it too in d2009.

Answer 5

Just a thought; picking up one of your comments that you have D5 and D7 installed, I would suggest;

remove d7
remove d5

reinstall D5
install third-party components D5
service package D5
reinstall d7
install third-party D7 components
service package D7

then try again, performing the trick of deleting all .DCUs in your own project directories.

In my experience, I have always tried to set them “in the order of numbers,” and if you need to delete them, I usually delete them all before proceeding with the reinstallation.

Answer 6

GExperts ToDo list window ... close it or any other GExperts Windows system. Make sure that the task manager increases the amount of memory, and then stops after closing any windows.

Answer 7

Largely from Delphi 5.0 these days. But I really remember that it was important to have the latest build for various reasons. Do you have this?? Go to Help-> About. I believe this is the latest version: Version 5.0 (Build 6.18) Service Pack 1

Answer 8

What OS are you using? If this is Windows 7, there may be incompatibility with Delphi 5, as it is a bit long in the tooth. Perhaps you can try running Delphi 5 in an XP virtual machine.

Answer 9

Since you had no problems with Delphi 7, is there any reason to port this application to Delphi 7? It will not be difficult to do if you do not have third-party components without a source.