Is Delphi 5 truly compatible for Win2000?

[LucieLastic]

hi All

My boss has just asked me whether Delphi 5 is truly compatible with Win2000 as he's been getting some strange behaviour, expecially with memory accessing. He said he's found literature saying Delphi 6 is ok with W2K but hasn't found anything saying D5 is. Is it ?

many thanks
lou

 

[EricDraven]

Ive been writing software with Delphi 5 on a windows 2000 machine for over a year now and have found absolutly no problems whatsoever. Being built on NT foundations I have found it to be the most stable version of Windows to date (and much better than XP).

 

[footpad]

Lou,

Like EricDraven, I've had no troubles deploying Delphi 5 applications under Win2K.

There are some considerations regarding installation and you need to use NT specific techniques, especially when making API calls, however standard VCL applications should work fine.

I would make certain you've installed the appropriate service packs, patches, updates, and so forth. Check to see if Windows is up to date, Delphi, BDE (if you're using it), and any third-party components (including the ones shipped with Delphi: QuickReports, NetManage, etc.)

Without more information regarding the "strange behavior," it's tough to hazard a guess, but I'd try to determine where the behavior is appearing and go from there. Make sure you're properly releasing previously allocated memory and so on.

One trick I use is to subclass the Exception object (or appropriate decendent) when raising exceptions. For example, consider:

unit xyzzy
// stuff...
interface
// more stuff...
type
   tXyzzyException = class( Exception );
const
   ERROR = 'An error occurred in the Xyzzy unit.' + #10#10 + 
      'Details: %s.';
// even more stuff...
implementation
procedure magicWord
begin
   if not Something() then
      raise tXyzzyException.createFmt( ERROR,
         [ 'MagicWord() - Something failed.' ] );
end;
// etc...

Something like the above at least tells you where you raised a custom exception. When combined with various try blocks to trap unexpected conditions, it's a very useful debugging aid.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance

 

[garwain]

I as well have been developing apps using Delphi5 that run on machines running win95, win98, winnt 4, and win2k. I have had more problems with older versions of windows than with win2k, and the problems are usually due to the poor memory management in win95

 

[LucieLastic]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

lou