BorlandTalk.com Borland discussion newsgroups   Archives   FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  Porting between VS and Borland Goto page 1, 2  Next          BorlandTalk.com Forum Index -> C++ Builder (Non-Technical) View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message Herby Guest Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:41 pm    Post subject: Porting between VS and Borland Is it possible to port a VS GUI project to Borland and vica versa? If not, why not? Thanks. Back to top Chris Uzdavinis (TeamB) Guest Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland "Herby" <prmarjoram (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writes: Quote: Is it possible to port a VS GUI project to Borland and vica versa? Anything is possible in source code, but the question is a matter of difficulty. Quote: If not, why not? If you use the VCL, then it probably won't work because it is written in Delphi and VS does not have a Delphi compiler. The C++ side of things involves several language extensions to work with VCL code that no other C++ compiler implements. If you depend on any of those features, you won't be able to recompile your code anywhere else. However, if you're using a non-vcl gui library, such as wxWindows or Qt, for example, that code is fairly portable and should work between different compilers, Borland and MS. The drawback is you give up the nice RAD functionality that BCB offers if you don't use the VCL. (This is why it's a wise design decision to write the heart of your application in portable C++ that can run on any platform, and then develop the GUI as a higher layer that is almost like a seperate project. Then when you go to port your application, you're really only needing to rewrite the GUI portion, and the main logic remains unaffected. (Assuming that the GUI is not portable, which is usually (but not always) the case.) -- Chris (TeamB); Back to top Alan Bellingham Guest Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:27 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland "Herby" <prmarjoram (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote: Quote: Is it possible to port a VS GUI project to Borland and vica versa? If not, why not? That depends. How much work do you consider it to be before it's no longer 'porting' and is now rewriting? Frequently, it's the GUI that has to be discarded and replaced, and if the application is little but GUI, then you're into rewriting. For instance, a Borland VCL application would require the VCL to be discarded. Alan Bellingham -- ACCU Conference: 11-14 April 2007 - Paramount Oxford Hotel Back to top Chris Uzdavinis (TeamB) Guest Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:30 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland "Herby" <prmarjoram (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writes: Quote: Is it possible to port a VS GUI project to Borland and vica versa? If not, why not? Oh yes, it also depends on the code you write. If your code makes use of any compiler bugs or other implementation-dependent features (order of evaluation of function arguments, etc) you may have your own non-portability issues that are of your own doing. Further, you may encounter bugs that prevent valid code that compiles on one compiler from correctly compiling (or running) when used with another compiler. It's usually a worthwhile exercise to keep a complicated application in a good compiling state under multiple compilers... just like getting second opinions from two doctors, one may diagnose problems the other does not find. I've done this between BCB and VC++ many years ago, and since the interface was seperate from the application, I was able to have a nice, GUI for the BCB build, and a simple text-mode output for the VC++ build. But the functionality was identical, and I was able to find problems with my code, and utilize different tools on it (profilers, different debuggers, etc) to get the most out of it. BCB was the main target, and VC++ was just to ensure that I was writing code that wasn't too platform/compiler dependent, and at the time (era BCB3) the VC++ debugger was orders of magnitude faster, and hence, more usable. -- Chris (TeamB); Back to top Daniel James Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 5:29 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland In article <1165855310.389853.28200 (AT) 79g2000cws (DOT) googlegroups.com>, Herby wrote: Quote: Is it possible to port a VS GUI project to Borland and vica versa? It depends ... it's certainly possible to write C++ programs that will build under both systems, but code written specifically for one system will very possibly not build on the other. If you have an application written using Borland's tools it will probably have been written to use Borland's Visual Component Library (VCL) which is a library written in Pascal (Delphi). There is no equivalent to VCL in Microsoft's tools, so you would have to rewrite any part of your app that relied upon that library. If you have an application written in using Microsoft's C++ it will very probably have been written using the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) -- a library that (like VCL) provides an easier-to-use C++ wrapper around the Windows API. Borland used to licence the MFC library from Microsoft so that Microsoft projects could be built with Borland's tools, but I don't know whether current Borland products ship with MFC nor whether the Borland version of it has been kept up-to-date. If you have the MFC library you can build an MFC project with Borland's tools, but note that Borland don't provide any support within their IDE to assist with further development of an MFC project, so it would be hard work to enhance the code once it had been ported. What I've said here applies to unmanaged C/C++ code ... if you have a managed code project in VS you can't port it. If you have a non C/C++ project in VS you can't port it, Note also that none of the compilers we may be talking about here, the Borland compiler, Visual C++ 6, and the VC7/8 (from VS 2003/2005) is a complete or correct implementation of the ISO C++ standard -- though VC8 is lacking in only a few somewhat contentious details. If you write a bleeding-edge modern C++ application you may get it to work with VC 8 and maybe VC7, but you are unlikely to get it to compile with either VC6 or the Borland tools. If you carefully choose a subset of ISO C++ that works on all the compilers, and avoid using proprietary libraries that are not available for all of them, you can write useful projects that can be built with any of the tools. Cheers, Daniel. Back to top Herby Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:01 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Thanks guys for the excellent info. Iv just inherited a rather large C++ Builder project in the telecoms industry. All my experience is with VS and MFC. like 10+ years They didnt make that clear in the interview :-| Oh well i like a challenge. So im just trying to get my bearings. Can anyone recommend some good reading? Ideally, something like "Having 10 years experience of VS/MFC then picking up a large project using Borland C++ Builder" Back to top Alan Bellingham Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:04 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland "Herby" <prmarjoram (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote: Quote: Thanks guys for the excellent info. Iv just inherited a rather large C++ Builder project in the telecoms industry. All my experience is with VS and MFC. like 10+ years They didnt make that clear in the interview Aha. It may be that it's not too much of a learning curve - after all, a properly structured application should cleanly separate GUI and underlying code. However, given the RAD abilities of BCB, there's at least a chance that all the logic is in the Button press event handlers. Good luck! Alan Bellingham -- ACCU Conference: 11-14 April 2007 - Paramount Oxford Hotel Back to top Darko Miletic Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:31 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Herby wrote: Quote: Thanks guys for the excellent info. Iv just inherited a rather large C++ Builder project in the telecoms industry. All my experience is with VS and MFC. like 10+ years They didnt make that clear in the interview I know your pain because I experienced something simmilar though in the other direction. From Borland to MFC monster :) Quote: Oh well i like a challenge. So im just trying to get my bearings. Can anyone recommend some good reading? Get any C++ Builder book you can purchase it will help because first thing you need to learn is basics of VCL. Back to top Herby Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:52 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Quote: I know your pain because I experienced something simmilar though in the other direction. From Borland to MFC monster Shall we swap jobs? At least we will have something real to compare the other against. Im sure we will come out better developers for it. Its just more exposure. Quote: Get any C++ Builder book you can purchase it will help because first thing you need to learn is basics of VCL. Will do. Can anyone recommend any good online resources, tutorials etc? Thanks. Back to top Andrue Cope [TeamB] Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:24 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Daniel James wrote: Quote: There is no equivalent to VCL in Microsoft's tools Well there's C# and WinForms :) The code changes required wouldn't be all that severe and a knowledgeable VCL developer will be up and running with Winforms almost immediately. They might occasionally be heard to mutter "why the <bleep> is it so klunky" though. ListViews and Datagrids seem to have a bizarrely innefficient way of rendering themselves that means anything more than three or four columns and performance becomes abysmal. -- Andrue Cope [TeamB] [Bicester, Uk] http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html Back to top Darko Miletic Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 9:45 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Herby wrote: Quote: Shall we swap jobs? At least we will have something real to compare the other against. Im sure we will come out better developers for it. Its just more exposure. Nice idea I would really like to get back to borland tools. Back to top Chris Uzdavinis (TeamB) Guest Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:03 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Alan Bellingham <alan (AT) lspace (DOT) org> writes: Quote: However, given the RAD abilities of BCB, there's at least a chance that all the logic is in the Button press event handlers. I hope not, for his sake! But RAD does encourage tight coupling of the presentation and application logic, which is a disaster waiting to happen. That means a major effort will be involved, as you surgically remove the important logic out of the presentation code. Worse is if you actually store your data directly in the VCL components, or whatever, because if you remove the presentation, your data structures vanish as well. Then, rather than being a view of the inner workings of the application, the GUI *is* the application. -- Chris (TeamB); Back to top Nathaniel L. Walker Guest Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:09 am    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Try Visual C++ with WinForms :) - Nate. "Andrue Cope [TeamB]" <no.spam (AT) not (DOT) a.valid.address> wrote in message news:457ebb43$1 (AT) newsgroups (DOT) borland.com... Quote: Daniel James wrote: There is no equivalent to VCL in Microsoft's tools Well there's C# and WinForms :) The code changes required wouldn't be all that severe and a knowledgeable VCL developer will be up and running with Winforms almost immediately. They might occasionally be heard to mutter "why the bleep> is it so klunky" though. ListViews and Datagrids seem to have a bizarrely innefficient way of rendering themselves that means anything more than three or four columns and performance becomes abysmal. -- Andrue Cope [TeamB] [Bicester, Uk] http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html Back to top Andrue Cope [TeamB] Guest Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 4:01 pm    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Nathaniel L. Walker wrote: Quote: Try Visual C++ with WinForms No thanks. I did for a while but ran away screaming. -- Andrue Cope [TeamB] [Bicester, Uk] http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html Back to top Herby Guest Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:14 am    Post subject: Re: Porting between VS and Borland Andrue Cope [TeamB] wrote: Quote: Nathaniel L. Walker wrote: Try Visual C++ with WinForms :) No thanks. I did for a while but ran away screaming. -- Andrue Cope [TeamB] [Bicester, Uk] http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html But i dont see the RAD capabilities an advantage to me, as the app has already been developed, i am going to have to maintain it and start adding some new features. RAD is great when you have a blank canvas. What i need is a great tool to help me maintain the code... Any recommendations? Its a killer app! Not a great deal of reading material on VCL either... Can anyone give me the major differences of the VCL from version 1 to version 5. Im using C++ Builder 5. Thanks. Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First         BorlandTalk.com Forum Index -> C++ Builder (Non-Technical) All times are GMT Goto page 1, 2  Next Page 1 of 2   Jump to: Select a forum C++ Builder Newsgroups----------------C++ BuilderC++ Builder (ActiveX)C++ Builder (Announcements)C++ Builder (Command Line Tools)C++ Builder DatabasesC++ Builder Databases (ADO)C++ Builder Databases (Desktop)C++ Builder Databases (InterBase Express)C++ Builder Databases (Multi-Tier)C++ Builder Databases (SQL Servers)C++ Builder (Graphics)C++ Builder (IDE)C++ Builder (Internet)C++ Builder (Internet Socket)C++ Builder (Internet Web)C++ Builder (Jobs)C++ Builder (Language)C++ Builder (Language C++)C++ Builder (Compatibility with MFC)C++ Builder (Native API)C++ Builder (Non-Technical)C++ Builder (Students)C++ Builder (Third Party Tools)C++ Builder (Upgrade)C++ Builder (VCL)C++ Builder (VCL Components Usage)C++ Builder (VCL Components Development)C++ Builder (VCL Usage)C++ Builder (WinAPI)C++ Builder Installation Delphi Newsgroups----------------Delphi (General)Delphi ActiveX Controls UsageDelphi ActiveX Controls DevelopmentDelphi As400Delphi DatabasesDelphi Databases (ADO)Delphi Databases (dbExpress)Delphi Databases (Desktop)Delphi Databases (InterBase Express)Delphi Databases (Multi-Tier)Delphi Databases (SQL Servers)Delphi DeploymentDelphi GraphicsDelphi IDEDelphi InternationalizationDelphi InternetDelphi Internet Isapi-WebBrokerDelphi Internet WebSnapDelphi Internet WinsockDelphi JobsDelphi Language BASMDelphi Language ObjectPascalDelphi Model Driven Architecture (General)Delphi Model Driven Architecture (Third Party)Delphi MultimediaDelphi Native APIDelphi Non-TechnicalDelphi ObjectPascalDelphi OLE AutomationDelphi OO designDelphi OpenToolsAPIDelphi Reporting-ChartingDelphi RTLDelphi StudentsDelphi TeamSourceDelphi Thirdparty ToolsDelphi Thirdparty Tools (General)Delphi Thirdparty Tools (IntraWeb)Delphi Thirdparty Tools (RaveReports)Delphi UpgradeDelphi VCLDelphi VCL ComponentsDelphi VCL Components UsingDelphi VCL Components WritingDelphi WebServices SOAPDelphi WinAPIDelphi XMLDelphi Installationcomp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.misccomp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.usagecomp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.writingcomp.lang.pascal.delphi.databasescomp.lang.pascal.delphi.misccomp.sources.delphi JBuilder Newsgroups----------------JBuilderJBuilder AnnouncementsJBuilder Applet IssuesJBuilder As400JBuilder CompilerJBuilder CORBA/RMIJBuilder DatabasesJBuilder DB SwingJBuilder DebuggerJBuilder DeploymentJBuilder DocumentationJBuilder EnterpriseJBuilder HandheldJBuilder IDEJBuilder JavaJBuilder JavaAPIJBuilder Java LanguageJBuilder Java SwingJBuilder Java BeansJBuilder Java Beans UsageJBuilder Java Beans DevelopmentJBuilder JBCLJBuilder JDataStoreJBuilder JobsJBuilder LinuxJBuilder MacintoshJBuilder & MobileSetJBuilder MultiLingual AppsJBuilder Non-TechnicalJBuilder OpenToolsJBuilder Servlets (JSP)JBuilder StudentsJBuilder Team DevelopmentJBuilder Thirdparty ToolsJBuilder UpgradeJBuilder Installation InterBase Newsgroups----------------InterBaseInterBase Bug DiscussionInterBase GeneralInterBase IBConsoleInterBase OpenSourceInterBase ReplicationInterBase SQLInterBase ThirdpartyInterBase Installation Miscellaneous Borland Newsgroups----------------AppCenterAppServerEnteraVisiBroker  You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2006 phpBB Group SEO toolkit © 2004-2006 webmedic.