Does The Delphi IDE Narrow You? Extend It! - ITDevConX European Delphi Conference 2019
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The document discusses the capabilities of the Delphi IDE and the importance of plugins, extensions, and expert tools to enhance productivity and streamline coding processes. It details various types of extensions possible through the Tools API, including wizards and native interfaces, along with best practices for implementation and testing. Additionally, it offers resources for further learning and highlights the community aspect of sharing and improving tools.
Does The Delphi IDE Narrow You? Extend It! - ITDevConX European Delphi Conference 2019
- 1. DOES THE DELPHI IDE NARROW YOU? EXTEND IT! Marco Breveglieri
- 2. MARCO BREVEGLIERI Homepage: www.breveglieri.it 👈 Blog: www.compilaquindiva.com 👈 Delphi Podcast: www.delphipodcast.com 👈 ABLS TEAM Software and Web (Reggio Emilia) featuring «Leo»
- 3. WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT?
- 4. Plugins! Extensions! Experts! Add-ons! What do we talk about?
- 5. Plugins have made the success of many apps. • Browsers o Mozilla Firefox o Google Chrome • CMS o Wordpress o Drupal • Developer tools o Atom o Eclipse o Visual Studio Code Sometimes, plugins are the piece of software that really matters. Plugins, plugins, plugins!
- 6. Delphi has some really good add-ons or tools, freeware or opensource. • General purpose and coding • GExperts • ModelMaker Code Explorer (MMX) • CnPack Wizards • DDevExtensions • Documentation Insight • Castalia • Error handling • Eureka Log • madExcept • Testing and quality • Automated QA • Test Insight • Hot fixes • Delphi SpeedUp • IDE Fix Pack …and many others… 👌 But Delphi often lacks specific, targeted and «feature focused» plugin. 🤔 What about Delphi?
- 7. What do I mean? Open Command Line Add New File Trailing Whitespace Visualizer Dummy Text Generator Show Selection Length XML, XPath & XSLT Tools Comment Remover Console Launcher Solution Cleaner PowerShell Prompt Encourage Farticus
- 8. The only limit is the sky! Many scenarios deals with writing code, but this is not always the case. You can create • Productivity tools that add file templates and projects, refactoring and cleaning code, add new dialogs or tool windows. • Support for new syntax and languages directly in the editor. • Domain specific designers that allow you to «draw» a model and optionally produce the code (or not). • Extend debugging features • Create replacements, integrations and work arounds of limited or disliked IDE features What can I do?
- 9. • Do things faster! • Invest more time in automation than documentation • More speed, less errors, high reliability, soft learning curve • Share your tools with colleagues or an entire community to get feedback and improvements, and also new tools • Decorate your framework with templates for projects and modules • Fix Delphi bugs or implement workarounds waiting for fixes • Last but not least… have fun! Benefits
- 10. Nobody is perfect. Not even Delphi. What can we do? Let’s build some Experts! So what?
- 11. TOOLS API
- 12. • Suite of over 100 interfaces! • Let’s you interact with and control the IDE Main action lists, image lists and menus Tool bars Modules and source editors Keyboard macros and bindings Forms (and their components) Debugger and Breakpoints Code Completion Message View To-Do List Build process Project and Item Repository What is Tools API
- 13. • All the interfaces are inside a unique code file: C:Program Files (x86)EmbarcaderoStudio20.0sourceToolsAPI.pas • You can implement some interfaces to extend the IDE • ToolsAPI provides some main kinds of extensions • Wizard a sort of setup class to easily build simple features (or host complex ones) • Notifier a class that contains logic that Delphi calls back when something interesting happens • Creator a class that supports the creation of new project, modules, units or virtually any kind of file How to use ToolsAPI
- 14. interface uses ToolsAPI; type TFirstWizard = class(TInterfacedObject, IOTAWizard) public procedure Execute; function GetIDString: string; function GetName: string; function GetState: TWizardState; procedure AfterSave; procedure BeforeSave; procedure Destroyed; procedure Modified; end; Sample Wizard
- 15. Where to put the code Package (.dpk) Library (.dll)
- 16. Library (.dll) Library (.dll) • Quite «old school» solution • They must be installed via registry • Runtime packages are required! • Registration, initialization and finalization code is more complex o You have to set the Application variable o What about the Memory Manager? • Delphi loads them early (some menus to anchor to may not be available)
- 17. • Natural container for all the elements in Delphi (types, records, classes, interfaces, routines, forms, frames, data modules, …) • Use of runtime packages is embedded • Register classes (and hence experts) is easy and straightforward • They can be installed/uninstalled «hot» and «live» directly from the IDE Where to put the code Package (.dpk)
- 18. Demo
- 19. • There is little… no documentation 😢 • You should refer to the comments inside «ToolsAPI.pas» • Pay attention! Your code runs inside the IDE • Delphi can crash or hang if your code misbehave or has errors • Testing is difficult, debugging even more! • If you are unsure, install the tool using a separate profile • Launch the Delphi IDE (bds.exe) as the Host Application • An effective «Code DOM» and a working parser would be appreciated • We hope that LSP support will resolve this issue and fill the gap Warning!
- 20. IDE SERVICES
- 21. NTA (Native Tools API) • Grants direct access to actual IDE objects, such as the TMainMenu object of the IDE. • The wizard must use RAD Studio packages (rtl, vcl, …). • The wizard is tied to a specific version of the IDE. Native/Open Interfaces OTA (Open Tools API) • Interfaces do not grant full access to the IDE. • All the functionality is available through OTA interfaces. • Interacting and extending the IDE occurs with the OTA layer as a mediator.
- 22. • Services give access to specific features through interfaces. • Interfaces can be obtained from one single global variable: BorlandIDEServices. • To get a service reference, you can call the Supports() method or cast BorlandIDEServices to the required type. • Some interfaces have numbers (are versioned when changed). Tools API Services
- 23. procedure SetKeystrokeDebugging(Debugging: Boolean); var Service: IOTAKeyboardDiagnostics; begin if Supports(BorlandIDEServices, IOTAKeyboardDiagnostics, Service) then Dialog.KeyTracing := Debugging; end; Get a service /1
- 24. var LServices: IOTAWizardServices; begin LServices := BorlandIDEServices as IOTAWizardServices; WizardIndex := LServices.AddWizard(TFirstWizard.Create); end; begin with BorlandIDEServices as IOTAWizardServices do WizardIndex := AddWizard(TFirstWizard.Create); end; Get a service /2
- 25. Demo(s)
- 26. RECAP
- 27. • Delphi (RAD Studio) Documentation http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Rio/en/Extending_the_IDE_Using_the_Tools_API • Dave’s (David Hoyle) Development Blog https://www.davidghoyle.co.uk/WordPress/?page_id=667 • Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=delphi+ota Resources
- 28. Q & A
Editor's Notes
- #3: Presentarsi molto velocemente per procedere poi con il tema principale.
- #4: Spiegare subito qual è il tema della sessione.
- #5: Nel talk si parlerà di creare plugin (con tutti i relativi sinonimi) per arricchire le funzionalità di Delphi. Anticipare poi la motivazione per cui si ritiene questo tema estremamente importante.
- #6: Evidenziare come, per molti software (compreso i concorrenti di Delphi) la presenza di un fiorente marketplace di plugin disponibili aumenti l’adozione dell’ambiente di sviluppo e crei un maggiore senso di community, fino ad arrivare al caso estremo di «VSCode» dove i plugin costituiscono la parte più rilevante del software.
- #7: Illustrare la situazione nel mondo Delphi, prevalentemente costituita da prodotti «macro», che spesso estendono l’IDE per gestire le proprie funzionalità, o nel caso di feature specifiche sono «collezioni» che a volte si sovrappongono pure e finiscono anche per ostacolarsi. Chiarire quindi qual è il tipo di estensione che si ha in mente.
- #8: Fornire qualche esempio di plugin che sarebbe interessante avere in Delphi e che risolve problematiche molto specifiche, ma nel contempo accelerando i tempi di sviluppo e riducendo drasticamente il «time to marker», con l’unico limite della fantasia. Mostrare anche il demo del plugin «Code Smells».
- #9: Spiegare quali sono i tipi di estensione che si possono creare e le funzionalità che possono avere (magari qualcuno non ci ha mai pensato).
- #11: Cosa fare quindi? Introdurre il percorso esplorativo per la creazione di nuovi expert per Delphi, esortando il pubblico a farlo e, se si ottiene qualcosa di utile, condividerlo, magari proponendo uno spazio su GetIt o DCI o altrove per beneficiarne tutti.
- #19: Creazione package, agg. riferimento a «DesignIDE», creazione classe OTAWizard.
- #26: Fare carrellata di tutti i demo che è stato possibile produrre.