[fpc-devel] FPC dynamic libraries

[George Birbilis]

> > So, a component that you place in the component palette implements 
> > some kind of "palette" interface, providing the IDE with the 
> > communications it needs to work with the component.
> 
> Nice idea, but I think you'll end up creating a set of 
> interfaces which describes completely 
> TCollection/TCollectionItem TPersistent and TComponent, plus 
> you'll need to completely redesign streaming from the ground 
> up, and that's not possible for Delphi compatibility. You 
> would loose all existing Delphi components out there.
> 
> Not to mention that you cannot insert a non-tcomponent in the 
> tComponent tree. And any 'component' from a package will be 
> regarded as a non-tcomponent by the code from classes, so: no 
> component on form, no streaming.
> 
> Delphi's IDE uses interfaces everywhere, but still assumes 
> TComponent/TPersistent as the base classes.
> 

Could have some mechanism for TComponents that don't implement the
IComponent to inject that functionality in them (maybe dynamically plug-in
[best via the VMT, else partically via a special cast used only by the IDE]
to the class an automatic IComponent interface implementation that
implements IComponent by calling into Tcomponent. 

Such components would have to be rebuilt with the same version as the IDE,
but others that implement IComponent (or IComponent2 etc.) themselves could
be shipped as binary ones (say for commercial or free components that give
no source [say have option to buy the source]), as long as they only use
interfaces to access the IDE and don't use any RTL functionality that has
objects. Such objects could also embed (and static link) to their own
(tried) RTL version instead of linking to the IDE's latest RTL (the 2nd case
needs RTL to be available as package I suppose - but even then could have
both a static RTL and a dynamic package for it [also such components could
ship their own RTL package maybe and it could be used only by them inside
the same process if some versioning and namespace mechanism is used])

Speaking of namespaces, Borland added concept (to support .NET) in latest
Delphis I think, has FPC done similar yet? Could help in this case

----------------
George Birbilis (birbilis at kagi.com)
Computer & Informatics Engineer
Microsoft MVP J# for 2004-2007
Borland "Spirit of Delphi"
3D, QuickTime, QTVR, Java, Delphi,
ActiveX, .NET components, Robotics
http://www.kagi.com/birbilis
http://birbilis.spaces.live.com