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Out of curiosity, does anyone know which IDE the developers of the Delphi IDE are using?

menjaraz
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Michael Küller
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1 Answers1

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In Delphi (probably the previous version). The compiler itself is written in C, but the IDE is written in Delphi. Through the OTA, you can actually access the various objects, like TActions, that exist in the IDE.

GolezTrol
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    IIRC, each version is started in the previous version, and as things are completed (in stages) the development team begins using the new version ("eating their own dog food"). One of he team (maybe Allen Bauer?) wrote a blog post about this a while back. – Ken White Oct 14 '11 at 11:15
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    Here is a very interesting SO question from Embarcadero's Barry Kelly about [converting the source of a compiler (Delphi?) from C to C++](http://stackoverflow.com/q/199627/859646) – JRL Oct 14 '11 at 13:21
  • Interesting. Would the multi-compiler setup of Delphi XE2 be written in C++ then? – GolezTrol Oct 14 '11 at 13:44
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    Remember that the command line compiler (dcc32.exe and that stuff) can build the IDE, from a batch file. In any large software project, there are subcomponents and teams for each subcomponent. The Delphi team is a bunch of very smart people who use a mix of Delphi, C++, and JSharp to build the product. The refactoring bits (based on TogetherJ) are still written in J#. I believe that for a long time, the DCC compiler sources were in C, using an ancient Borland C compiler version to build them. Maybe that's now C++? – Warren P Oct 14 '11 at 14:23
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    Once upon the time, i've studied internals of D207 IDE, and all of IDE packages (i was interested in native code only) exhibited BC++ signatures. So, IDE is not written in Delphi at 100% confidence level. Prooflink(s) needed. – Premature Optimization Oct 14 '11 at 22:48
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    Warren: while I don't necessarily think that a multilanguage project is always a bad idea, not all of those languages were picked on merit. From what I heard they reflect what was going on in other divisions of Borland at the time they were introduced to Delphi. (e.g. Turbo C++ was the first compiler in a HLL within Borland, while TP was in assembler, the refactoring bits come from Borlands ALM push etc) – Marco van de Voort Oct 15 '11 at 15:23
  • That's Delphiception. – Machado Jun 27 '16 at 14:12