August PLUG topic: Kylix

[David P. Schwartz]

Kurt Granroth wrote:

> On Wednesday 25 July 2001 02:42 pm, Matt Alexander wrote:
> > When I've played around with KDevelop, I've also used Qt Designer for
> > creating all my windows and widgets.  Qt Designer saves your widgets in XML
> > format and then they're easily incorporated into your KDevelop project.  So
> > I guess the two together would equal a RAD environment?
>
> It's still not at the same level -- the addition of Designer just makes
> KDevelop a more complete IDE.  To be a RAD environment, KDevelop would need
> to ship with a full complement of very-high-level objects or components that
> handle things like databases, web development, 'net development, and the like.
>
> Hmm... well, maybe I'll back up a little.  KDevelop+Designer *is* a bit of a
> RAD tool when combined with the power of Qt2+KDE 2.x libraries.  And since
> you can't get KDevelop without KDE, you could make the argument that they are
> shipped together.
> --
> Kurt Granroth            | http://www.granroth.org

To port Delphi to the Linux platform, I believe that Borland licensed a Qt implementation from some outfit then retrofitted their
underpinnings to talk to that rather than Windows.  The new library is called CLX, and it's a very close parallel to the VCL supported
in Windows.

The most impressive thing about Kylix is how unimpressively similar it is to Delphi 5.  As long as you don't use any Windows-specific
stuff, most components and projects will port right over, needing only a recompile.

If you target the CLX library in Delphi 6 (rather than the VCL), you get complete source-level portability between Windows and Linux
environments.

If you happen to work for an outfit that's heavily invested in Windows and is having a difficult time figuring out how to breech the gap
into Linux, Delphi 6 + Kylix is the fastest and most efficient way to go today.  (Unless they're considering Java, in which case, you
want to look at Borland's JBuilder 5...)

-David