Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

September 11, 2006

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

Registered users of Delphi 2006 can download special free versions of Castalia, CodeHealer, Beyond Compare Differ, and (for the C++ camp) BuilderBoost. Did you know and how did you find out?

Since a couple of weeks (apparently from August 23rd), the Delphi Registered Users Udpates page includes the option to download four free plugin tools:

Castalia is a very nice IDE addin, providing many extra editor and refactoring features, and much more. It has been the favorite IDE plugin since CodeRush moved to the MS camp.
CodeHealer is a very intriguing source code analysis tool. I've never used it myself, but I've seen interesting demos and plan playing with it.
Beyond Compare is by far the best source code comparion tool I've used, and I use it almost every day. I own a site license... but I remember suggesting Borland to use it rather than the internal history diff of the IDE, which I don't like at all.
Of BuilderBooster, I don't know much. Seems nice, though. I still remember C++ slow compile time...

Now, kudos to Borland (or I should say DevCo, I guess) for providing extra value to their current customers... hoping this won't be a "one-shot" offer, but they'll integrate these or similar technologies in future versions of their products.

But, and this is a relevant and recurring problem, I don't see how you launch an offer like this and tell only a few people... via the Delphi Hour, the newsgroups, some non-Borland blog entries... it is true I saw this mentioned on a local Borland/DevCo mailing list, it is true Borland Australia refers to it while presenting an event.... but it is not on bnd.borland.com nor on blogs.borland.com. Odd.

Anyway, the products above are not full versions. For example, this edition of Castalia includes (in the word of author Jacob Thurman):

* Structural Highlighting - http://www.twodesk.com/castalia/structural_highlighting.html
* Refactoring - "Rename Local Variable" and "Inline Temporary Variable" refactorings.
* Navigation toolbar - http://www.twodesk.com/castalia/code_navigation.html
* Modeless text search - http://www.twodesk.com/castalia/text_search.html

Even if not complete, this looks a valuable subset of the tool for those who don't own it. I guess similar deals are in place with the other vendors. By the way, you can now buy Castalia with a special wedding discount!

posted by marcocantu @ 6:07PM | 7 Comments [0 Pending]

7 Comments

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

Thanks for bringing these tools to our attention. I'm
checking some of them out now.

I completely agree with your about Beyond Compare vs.
the default embedded comparison tool. In fact, I wrote
a QC entry for it, 
http://qc.borland.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=12162

The issue was closed, which I think it shouldn't have.
Thomas Mueller suggests using the free Beyond Compare
Differ tool you mentioned. It's something, but far
from being an embedded comparison tool.

Comment by Kyle A. Miller [http://www.millerdevelopment.info] on September 11, 22:00

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

I heard it mentioned in the newsgroups, and went to
download it.  It's amazing how little publicised it
was - if it hadn't been for that single thread, I
would have missed this completely.  Yet I keep an eye
on Delphi & DevCo news and read a bunch of newsgroups
and blog postings every morning.  I wonder how many
other things are out there too...

Comment by David M [] on September 12, 02:30

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

Thanks for the info and I installed all of them to my
BDS 2006. Castalia is cool but there is a serious
problem for me... whenever I opened the
'Outlook2000.pas' source file it consumes 50% cpu time
(i.e. one whole cpu on my dual xeon pc)... and the
only way to get it back to normal is to KILL bds from
the task list...

Comment by william on September 12, 10:42

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

Does anyone know if this stuff works with the Turbos?

Comment by Cheryl Morgan [http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/] on September 12, 16:20

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

Ssssssssshhhh! Stop this noise! Someone in 
Borland/DevCo. could awake from his/her nap... <g>

Comment by Kent Morwath on September 12, 19:05

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

  Turbo users cannot download these tools.

Turbo Explorers cannot install any third-party tools.

Turbo Professionals users can buy full versions of 
these tools from the vendors.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Comment by Lex Mark [http://blog.csdn.net/lextm] on September 13, 09:00

Delphi 2006 Free Tools (Almost a Secret)

 Has any BDS2006 user who downloaded version 2.0 of
Beyond Compare through borland been able to get the
"PlugINS" working? (e.g a hex view compare) I see the
real product is already on version 2.4 ? Does this
product allow for identical integration into the
BDS2006 IDE ?

Comment by on December 17, 02:53

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