I spotted a post on the EMB ngs saying that D2006 can't be installed on Windows 8. My Vista PC has life left in it but I'm trying to think ahead. I doubt I'll buy Delphi X? (just to expensive for a hobby) so I'm thinking of Lazarus / Free Pascal.

Anyone have any experience / comments to share?

Roy Lambert

Hi Roy,

> Anyone have any experience / comments to share?

A bit late to the party, but better late than never ey?  

I don't have experience with Lazarus as such, but I have gone the route
of having Delphi (or my development environment) installed in a Virtual
Machine environment all of it's own.

One of the benefits of this is that I still have access to my old Delphi
7 setup on Windows XP for when some clients ring me out of the blue 8
years later wanting some change done.

I still have the old development environment handy, and can boot up on
any OS I want (including Windows 8), and use my familiar previous version.

(I also have my current IDE's on VM's as well. So much easier to backup,
or upgrade my computer that way)

Probably a different route to what you were thinking, but it would allow
you to continue to develop for years into the future without having to
worry about whether a new OS will support your IDE or not.

Cheers

Adam.

I agree with Adam. I use Virtual Box which is free from Oracle and have installed XP in it which runs on my Win 7 64bit host. I have all Delphi versions (from D3 to XE4) installed in the same VB. If I need to replace the host machine, I don't have to worry about re-installing and patching all of the Delphi versions which can take me a couple of days. Plus I can create a snapshot in 10 seconds should I need to revert back to it.

So using some type of virtual machine for Delphi is definitely the way to go.

Barry

Adam / Barry


A VM was one of the approaches I was thinking of, just need to buy a 32bit & 64bit W7 before they run out.

Roy Lambert

Hi Roy,

> A VM was one of the approaches I was thinking of, just need to buy a
32bit & 64bit W7 before they run out.

Depending on what sort of license you already have for your existing Win
7 machine (ie, if it's not OEM) - you may be able to virtualise your
existing machine without needing to purchase another copy.

I use VMWare, which allows you to convert a physical machine into a
virtual machine. That way, when you update to Windows 8, you can still
have your previous machine as is - pre converted, and use the same license.

In fact, you may be able to try it for free, using the free VMWare
converter, and also using VMWare player.

Cheers

Adam.