DelphiTools.info » Tools

Delphi 2009 hidden compiler switch?

Eric — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:46:26 +0000

This morning while debugging a statistical ichthyo-parser I stumbled upon what looked like a Delphi 2009 compiler bug: the compiler was outputting gibberish ASM opcodes… But after further investigations, it appeared this wasn’t completely gibberish, but that it was (somewhat) correct MSIL bytecode!

What’s more, a quick hexadecimal examination of dcc32.exe yelded that this MSIL codegen looks like it can be forced by using an undocumented command-line compiler switch: -af

The resulting exe won’t run because it’s a mismatch of Win32 headers and MSIL bytecode… What do you think?
Did CodeGear plan supporting unmanaged code in managed executables or managed code in native executables?

Update: here is a screenshot of the switch in action.

MapFileStats public release

Eric — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:56:29 +0000

MapFileStats is a simple free utility to obtain executable binary size statistics derived from a “.map” file.

Use it to know which units contribute the most to an executable’s size, which DFMs are the largest, which units you have dependencies on but barely use in your executable, or merely to know exactly what gets into your executable.

You can integrate it into the Delphi IDE via the Tools menu, see the MapFileStats page for more details or to the download page and see for yourself!

Using SamplingProfiler from the IDE

Eric — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:13:30 +0000

SamplingProfiler comes as a stand alone-application, but it’s also ready for integration in the IDE via the Tools menu. Go to the Tools menu configuration and add an entry for SamplingProfiler. Set the parameters field to $EXENAME. Voilà!

From now on, when working on a project, you can compile and then hit the SamplingProfiler entry in the tools menu, it will open on your current project executable. If you saved a profiling project (.spp file) alongside your executable, it will be loaded automatically too.

DelphiTools.info

Eric — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:52:36 +0000

http://DelphiTools.info/ shall be the url for this page for the foreseeable future, the one you can bookmark!
When time allows, I’ll post my other Delphi-oriented tools here, hence the name of the site. For now I’ve just added a few links, I’ll be adding more and reworking the site pages as I get more familiar with WordPress.