Delphi 7: Any differences between compilation under Win XP or Windows Server 2003?

Question

I have an outdated support application. Currently, releases are created from one specific developer workstation, which is a bad, bad habit.

I asked for a virtual build server to automate the build from one centralized environment. The only problem is that the server they gave me started with Windows Server 2003 and they won’t give me Windows XP for this ...

Should I be careful on specific issues, what should I know?

thanks

Answer 1

Usually, the OS on which the application is built does not matter with Delphi, so there should be no problems. The only exception would be with any imported type libraries, because a newer OS might have a newer version. This can be circumvented by not using the imported block directly, but by copying the known good version into your project, renaming it and adding it to version control.

Answer 2

The compiler itself does not care, and it will produce the same code independently.

Answer 3

Depending on your version of Delphi, the license allows you to “install” the command line compiler on a separate build computer for the purpose of these types of builds. It doesn’t matter what the OS is.

In fact, you do not need to use the Delphi installer to install such a PC assembly. My collector simply has the following folders directly copied to it (you may need / want to add the bin path to the PATH environment variable).

Program Files \ CodeGear \ RAD Studio \ 5.0 \ bin
Program Files \ CodeGear \ RAD Studio \ 5.0 \ lib
Program Files \ CodeGear \ RAD Studio \ 5.0 \ source
Program Files \ Common Files \ RAD Studio \ Shared Assemblies \ 5.0

Answer 4

I used the machine to build Win2003 and Delphi 7 for quite some time, without running into problems. Also, development and debugging worked fine. I even sometimes used a terminal server to access the console, also no problem.