August PLUG topic: Kylix

[Kurt Granroth]

On Wednesday 25 July 2001 11:23 pm, David P. Schwartz wrote:
> 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.

Slight clarification: they didn't license "a Qt implementation from some 
outfit".. they licensed Qt (there is only one) from Trolltech, the company 
that created it and sells it.  Trolltech also provided support and code to 
Borland during the process since this was obviously a big deal to them.

> 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.

Yes.  From what I've heard, it's actually pretty hard to stick at the CLX 
level all the time, though.  Borland gets around this a little by allowing 
you to directly access the Qt layer underneath.  Since Qt is fully 
cross-platform, this isn't a problem when doing xplatform apps.
-- 
Kurt Granroth            | http://www.granroth.org
KDE Developer/Evangelist | SuSE Labs Open Source Developer
granroth@kde.org         | granroth@suse.com
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