Mike Rozlog, Delphi product manager, has released an updated roadmap for the product. You can find it at http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39934.

The update is far from a revolution, with the focus for the coming versions on multi-platform (first) and 64bit support (next). However, we now have more details, some dates, and a set of 5 ongoing projects. These are not in a strict temporary order, as has been clarifies on the newsgroups). Here are some info on the 5 projects:

  • Fulcrum: Native cross-platform support for the Mac. With a cross-platform VCL-like library, a remote debugger, source code management (that is, full version control integration), sequence diagrams support, Microsoft Azure integration. This means, only the first two elements are for Mac support, while many other features address needs of Delphi Win32 developers.
     
  • Wheelhouse: Adding Linux support. This was optionally supposed to be part of Fulcrum in the past, now it is clearly another step of the product. Notice the emphasis on server-side development support and support for Apache.
     
  • 64-bit Compiler Preview: This is another new project, clearly a limited command line compiler, but has a date attached: 1st half of 2011.
     
  • Commodore: Complete 64bit support for Delphi, with RTL, VCL, and cross-platform library support for 64 bit, enhanced multi-threading and multi-core support (parallelization support in the RTL), social network integration (I wonder what that is?).
     
  • Chromium: This is far from clear. It mentions "access to computer infrastructures" (that is, cloud computing), and talks a lot about user interface. It seems they'll work on natural input (location, voice, motion) but also think of ARM support and Rich Internet Applications. My guess, this is just an assorted group of possible directions, but you should not take them too seriously.

A few comments. First, it is good to have updates about future projects, even better to have some date attached to them. For sure, this is a very partial list, and it seems projects more far away in the future are just sketched. Overall, the projects are not much different from what was announced a few months back. I agree with a forum comment that hopefully we don't "have to wait all the way until Commodore to get better documentation".

An interesting comment (for a long thread look here) I saw was about the fact Embarcadero is "more interested in hunting for new markets than keeping existing customers". Yes, it might as well look like that, but on the other hand I certainly want Delphi to let my applications (and knowledge) move beyond the current OS and embrace new technologies (and some new over-hyped ones, as well). So, while I partially agree with the comment, I really hope Delphi can attract new users as well, to remain healthy. As another person put it they might be "chasing easy consensus instead of tackling real issues", but this consensus only result in better perception at large.

By the way, as an active Kylix user, as much as I would like to have a 64-bit compiler Linux server support is top priority for me. But I know this is a personal point of view... more or less like any other personal point of view asking for the opposite.

Another complain is that " Embarcadero is missing very important emerging platform - rich mobile. Now iPhone OS and Android are already true rich platforms for business applications." That's partially true, but remember that Embarcadero has also a Java development tool, that iPhone has a nice rule disallowing applications written in Pascal, and that Android has no real native SDK! Also, moving existing code to these platform is far from a trial stance. But notice, again, ARM support. This is brand new in the roadmap.

Finally from a comment by Nick we can also learn that J# dependencies in the IDE (used by the modeling) are going to be remove.