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Comment by mickeyp | Hacker News Reader

As a Python dev, and a former (longtime) Delphi developer, I figured I'd give the pip module and test code a whirl. The VCL (and Delphi's IDE) were fantastic RAD tools in their day.

It immediately crashed with a pointer error. So not off to a swimming start. Both strace and gdb immediately browbeats my Ubuntu when I try to look into why it's banjaxed, forcing me to reboot it. Ugh.

I think, much like even-versioned releases of Delphi -- which were famously half-baked and buggy, and you'd inevitably end up dealing with a confluence of bugs until the odd-released version came out a year or two later -- this one could do with a bit more time in the oven.

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> It immediately crashed with a pointer error. So not off to a swimming start. Both strace and gdb immediately browbeats my Ubuntu when I try to look into why it's banjaxed, forcing me to reboot it. Ugh.

>> VCL is focused on native Windows development

Am I missing something?

Delphi, or indeed Kylix, and any subsequent incarnation thereof, has had some form of Linux compatibility going back probably decades at this point. I have no idea if Delphi still does. But it used to, anyway. So not an unreasonable baseline assumption for a Delphi dev to make in 2023.

The github page for the module also claims Linux support; but of course, as we all know, that is a moving and irregular target :)

> I have no idea if Delphi still does.

It does. Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux:

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

Did you use FMX or VCL? FMX is the cross platform UI library.

FMX. I followed the GH instructions.

I suspect it's a shared library thing; which is what I wanted to track down, but it crashed Ubuntu. I'm sure it's an easy fix.

I just tried on Ubuntu 22.04.1 and the included sample apps worked. I was able to run Simplest.py, ToDoList.py, controlsdemo.py, and HelloDelphiFMX.py.

> I think, much like even-versioned releases of Delphi -- which were famously half-baked and buggy, and you'd inevitably end up dealing with a confluence of bugs until the odd-released version came out a year or two later

I still remember, like some XE(n) version had a really unstable ide/debugger and they didn't even bother fixing it, you had to wait till the next version was released (and you had to pay for it) for the bug to be fixed. There was even some guy that decompiled the ide and offered free fixes online for some more annoying bugs.

I'm pretty sure that's Andreas Hausladen (idefixpack.de) Huge thanks to him!

This sounds like it might be an issue with how you installed Python. This is something we are working on improving and there is more information on GitHub

https://github.com/Embarcadero/DelphiFMX4Python/issues/40

Yes, just doing this core dumps on my computer (Linux Mint)

form delphifmx import *

Binary wheels? They are unsound and frequently broken.

Why would Delphi replace a sane language with Python?

This may be an issue with how your Python is installed. It is something we are working on.

https://github.com/Embarcadero/DelphiFMX4Python/issues/40 https://github.com/Embarcadero/DelphiFMX4Python/discussions/...

If not, please file a bug report and we will take a closer look.

Thank you so much for your reply.

Looking through the installation scripts that you have linked to, it appears that the entire python installation must be within the /Delphi4Python directory and not in the usual directories on Linux? Also, the script downloads the python source files and compiles it with the -enable-shared option selected.

That is a strange requirement which will limit the usage of delphifmx.

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