My View on New Delphi Roadmap

Embarcadero published a new roadmap for Delphi on May 10. You can see the new roadmap here.

I don’t know if we can call it a roadmap or not. It does not give any time schedule or estimation on when each mentioned feature might be available (except a rough estimation for 64-bit compiler preview availability in the first half of 2011). To me, the published roadmap does not clear any ambiguity regarding Delphi future. It just adds more to it! Really, what was the purpose of publishing this?! Maybe just to  muffle those Delphi users who were complaining about not having any updated roadmap.

Now, let’s take a look at this so-called roadmap…

I skip those unnecessary slides which say the focus of product in future is on this or that, because as far as I know, almost all RAD development tools focus on stuff like better performance, Rich GUI, Cutting-edge data access, and so on. So to me, such pages don’t add anything to reader’s knowledge about the product.

Then in page 8, we see the the projects R&D team are working on:

• Fulcrum
• Wheelhouse
• 64-bit compiler preview
• Commodore
• Chromium

According to other pages in the roadmap, and what we already heard from Delphi team, there are teams working on these projects in parallel. This is good that they are working on these projects in parallel, but that adds some more ambiguity, because you don’t know what features of which project will be available in each release. For example Chromium is the last project in the list, and one of the features it will focus on is documenting OTA. Since the works are done in parallel, then they might finish documenting OTA while the main focus is on the Fulcrum or Wheelhouse or Commodore. So you might see OTA documentation released with one of the earlier projects. It can be taken the other way too, you might see a feature in Fulcrum or Wheelhouse projects not being ready at the time they are supposed to be, and postponed to Commodore or Chromium, or post-chromium release!

So you have no time frame, and no info when each mentioned feature is supposed to be released. Your desired feature might come into product in a few months to a couple of years (maybe even more, who knows?). I don’t know why Embarcadero likes to be so ambiguous!

Project Fulcrum

The main focus right now is on project Fulcrum. It is said that Fulcrum is currently in private Beta phase, and will be available as public Beta some time soon, and will probably go Final in summer. According to the roadmap, the main theme of Fulcrum is building cross-platform applications. The old roadmap was mentioning Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, but the new roadmap only talks about Windows and Mac OS X. There is no Linux. Linux support is postponed to Wheelhouse project. It is not clear if at least building console applications in Linux is supported in Fulcrum. But it is clear that even Mac OS X support is about client applications in Fulcrum, and you can’t use technologies like DataSnap servers in Mac OS X until project Wheelhouse is released. So again Embarcadero is proving that they are not good at setting  project goals, and estimating projects. As we saw with 64-bit compiler, Linux support will not be available on time, and is going to be postponed. It might be available very soon after Fulcrum release, or it might go the same path 64-bit compiler went, and be postponed for a couple of years. No one knows.

Beside its main theme, Fulcrum is supposed to bring some other features to RAD Studio. First of all, it is mentioned it will provide remote debugging for Mac OS X. I don’t know why is this mentioned here because when they mention they are going to target Mac OS X platform, then they either provide a Mac-based IDE, or a Windows-based IDE cross-compiling for Mac OS X. They took the second approach, and with that, it is obvious that they should provide a remote debugging mechanism. It is a must-have feature for a cross-compiling tool, not a subsidiary feature.

Then we have “Cross-platform VCL-like component library. According to Michael Rozlog in his interview with Jim McKeeth for Delphi Podcast #37, this cross-platform component library is a continuation of CLX library which was a wrapper for Qt GUI framework back in Delphi 6 and Delphi 7. There are no further details about this CLX based component framework except that again according to Michael Rozlog, most of old CLX based Delphi applications should be able to upgrade to this new framework easily, putting aside Unicode migration which is a different story.

The other feature which is supposed to be available in project Fulcrum is better integration with version control software, specially Subversion. It seems OTA is extended to provide a better version control support, and a SVN integration extension will be published with RAD Studio using the new OTA features. According to Nick Hodges in Delphi Podcast #40, this SVN extension is based on open-source DelphiSVN project, and will be published as an open-source tool. The good thing about this new feature is that it will be integrated into History tab of code editor. It seems cool!

Another feature in project Fulcrum is supporting UML Sequence diagrams. That’s good, but well it’s been a while that I use Model Maker for modeling. I do admit that modeling support in RAD Studio 2010 is also very cool.

Next feature is Automatic unit test generation. This is another unclear feature. What is this feature supposed to do?  Automatic unit test generation is already integrated into Delphi using DUnit. What extra stuff is this feature supposed to bring to RAD Studio?

Again another unclear feature is “RESTful Server creation”. This is already provided in RAD Studio 2010, and it is not clear what other stuff regarding to RESTful servers are going to come with project Fulcrum. I think Embarcadero should had gone into more details with these two features in their roadmap.

And the last feature mentioned in project Fulcrum is supporting cloud computing by providing Microsoft Azure integration, which is a nice addition to project Fulcrum.

Project Wheelhouse

Project Wheelhouse is supposed to bring full Linux support to RAD Studio. It will also complete Mac OS X support by providing server side support on both Linux and Mac OS X along with Windows.

64-bit Compiler Preview

64-bit support will not come to RAD Studio sooner than the first half of 2011. Even at that time, you will have a command-line only compiler preview. It is not clear how this compiler preview is going to be shipped; Are Embarcadero going to release a new Delphi version in 1st half of 2011? Or are they supposed to release this compiler preview as an update? As far as I know, they do not ship new features in updates, and usually RAD Studio is released once per year.

Project Commodore

I’m not going to spend that much time on project Commodore and Chromium, because they seem far away, and probably will see many changes in future. Project Commodore is supposed to bring full 64-bit compiler support. If you follow Delphi news, then you probably know project Commodore from previous Delphi roadmaps. It’s been a couple of years that Commodore is there on the roadmap. According to previous roadmaps, we should have had it in 2010, but now according to the current roadmap, it is at least 1.5 to 2 years away from us.

Better multi-core support, and Delphi Parallel Library are other features being worked on in project Commodore. I hope we see DPL sooner; because within 2 years a parallel library wouldn’t be considered as an advantage, but a must-have feature. So it wouldn’t be an advertising point for Embarcadero in 2012 to say, hey we also have this cool parallel library in our product!

Social Networking Integration is another feature for Commodore. Again this is a cool feature if delivered on time, otherwise it wouldn’t make any advantage for Delphi.

And the last feature mentioned for project Commodore is  Better Documentation. I hope they don’t mean people should wait at least 2 years to have better documentation in RAD Studio! It seems this is one of those features that we probably will see sooner, because as we saw in RAD Studio 2010 documentation, the documentation team is working hard to provide better documents in each release, and even with help updates.

Project Chromium

Well, this one looks so far away. This project is supposed to enable Delphi target other hardware platforms rather than Intel X86. Specially mobile platforms. It is also supposed to provide better support for other natural inputs (beside gesture and touch) like voice, video motion, and location (probably supporting GPS in mobile devices). These stuff are cool, but it is not clear or even estimated when such things are supposed to be provided.

Some other features in project Chromium are already being worked on, and we see their progress in each release; like improving look & feel of VCL controls, and IDE, or more integration with database tools. I also expect OTA documentation to be available sooner than other features in this project, and I guess we will see it in the next release or the release after next release (This is just an assumption).

DataSnap (Adaptive) Application Server, and Extended RIA Approach are also mentioned in Project Chromium, but again they lack any detailed specifications.

So it was my take on the newly published document, called roadmap, by Embarcadero. If you want to make any estimated plan for your carrier with Delphi, this document is, to me, quiet useless, and doesn’t really give you any insight.

Entry-level SKU

As you might know, one of the recent hot debates in Delphi community was around Embarcadero providing a free or cheap entry-level SKU for RAD Studio. Michael Rozlog mentioned in his Delphi Podcast #37 that they are working on it, and probably we will see that in next major release which is project Fulcrum.

But according to Nick Hodges in Delphi Podcast #40, they haven’t made their mind yet, and it is not still clear how this entry-level SKU would be. But something is clear; a free version is not on the table anymore. They are just working on a cheap entry-level SKU which its specifications are still unclear. So we won’t see free Delphi anymore!

I hope at least they provide the command-line compiler free, and make it available in all three major platforms they are going to support (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X). This way hobbyists and students could use a free editor like NotePad++ and write Delphi code on their preferred platform for free.

Regards