RAD Studio 2010: Community pulse: The day after. (Part 2)

Some interesting topics about RAD Studio 2010:

The fastest fix ever?

With few days before release, there was a very hot thread in .public.non-technical forum, called  ‘Fatal threading model!’. The issue mentioned there was fixed in the official version released shortly after:…

  TThread = class
  private type
    PSynchronizeRecord = ^TSynchronizeRecord;
    TSynchronizeRecord = record
      FThread: TObject;
      FMethod: TThreadMethod;
      FProcedure: TThreadProcedure;
      FSynchronizeException: TObject;
    end;
  private
{$IFDEF MSWINDOWS}
    FHandle: THandle;
    FThreadID: THandle;
{$ENDIF}
{$IFDEF LINUX}
    // ** FThreadID is not THandle in Linux **
    FThreadID: Cardinal;
    FCreateSuspendedSem: TSemaphore;
    FInitialSuspendDone: Boolean;
{$ENDIF}
    FCreateSuspended: Boolean;
    FTerminated: Boolean;

  //snipped

  public
    constructor Create(CreateSuspended: Boolean);
    destructor Destroy; override;
    procedure AfterConstruction; override;
    // This function is not intended to be used for thread synchronization.
    procedure Resume; deprecated;
    // Use Start after creating a suspended thread.
    procedure Start;
    // This function is not intended to be used for thread synchronization.
    procedure Suspend; deprecated;
    procedure Terminate;
 //...etc...

Do you note the Deprecated keyword next to Resume and Suspended? Also, the new Start procedure? From what I remember, this is the fastest official fix delivery in any Delphi version. And the decision was based (almost) entirely on community feedback. I think that this is very important because nowadays everything which one can program, the other can program it too. The key of success is how fast you cover an emerging need of your user base. For this they need to have a “user base” to communicate with (and here the responsibility is on both sides), and after they’ll find the common wavelength they need to try to minimize their response time. Yes, the things get better but still… And when I say ‘but still…’ I do not imply heroics. Usually a better thinking, a better cooperation, leveraging the other’s experience yields way better results than a ‘march of death’ stretched over countless days and nights.

Nothing to see in the source code… Or perhaps…

I posted a larger snippet above in order to show the LINUX IfDefs. But there are other pieces of code like the following one in SysUtils.Pas:

unit SysUtils;

{$H+,B-,R-}
{$WARN SYMBOL_PLATFORM OFF}
{$WARN UNSAFE_TYPE OFF}

interface

uses
{$IFDEF MSWINDOWS}
Windows,
{$ENDIF}
{$IFDEF POSIX}
Types,
{$IFDEF MACOSX}
MiniLibc,
{$ELSE !MACOSX}
Libc,
{$ENDIF !MACOSX}
{$ENDIF}
SysConst;

Of course all these strange IFDEFs doesn’t do anything. Yet… 😉

Yes, the future is beginning to take shape in Delphi 2010. And speaking about the future, can you answer the following? Your feedback will shape the future:

And…

Thank you for voting!

As  usual, most probably we’ll post the results with few comments around. Waiting for your feedback.