Thursday, May 31, 2012

Namespaces, open source and you

I have to admit - this will be kind of a rant. 8)

These days I am getting really annoyed when people are using XE2 when they are contributing to open source projects that are supposed to work also for XE or lower - no offense.

Huh, why?

Because XE2 just as every Delphi before automatically adds units to the uses clauses which are - you can see what is coming - are different from how they have been before for ages. Instead of having Forms in the uses of the typical VCL application, now we get Vcl.Forms. Or all the units that get added to a form.

So everyone not using XE2 will be unable to compile the awesome code you just wrote if you forgot to manually fix this unless he does it himself!

Maybe some clever people out there familar with IDE plugins figure out a way to restore the old way units are named when using them in a uses clause - which still works given you add the required namespaces to the project options.

Please share your thoughts. :)