Every Year I have to renew my developer certificates and provisioning profiles for my distributed Delphi Apps… and every year, something goes haywire. Over the years I have refined these instructions to attempt to save myself (sometimes literally WEEKS) of absolute hell. So if you want to survive this process, do exactly what I say in this guide. If you don’t, you’ll regret it! Feel free to comment on any pitfalls you encounter during this time. This really only covers RENEWALS. I am assuming your app was built and distributed at some time in the past and now you’re trying to just keep it alive.
Continue reading “Descending into iOS Distribution Hell: A Delphi Dev’s Survival Guide (2024 Edition)”Dusting off A 20-Year-Old Delphi Documentation Generator
Years ago I was told by an asshole boss at a company I worked for that I was going to be “fired” if I didn’t “document my code” (although it should be noted that I maintained a department library of dozens and dozens of white papers on our software design… but he was too much of an asshole to care).
To shut him up, I showed up to the scheduled meeting a month later with a stack of paper as tall as two dictionaries, full of detailed information about every single class, method, and function written by our six-person development team. I determined from the start that there would have been no way I could have done this manually, so I spent weeks of my personal time building a documentation generator to handle the chore with its own Pascal language compiler.
Although barely working, I have brought my old documentation generator back to life and built a barely-working barebones web front end for it online for the purpose of documenting my Delphi CommonX library, but don’t get too eager to read much of it because the documentation sitting on the documentation server is super sparse and simply for the purpose of testing a new searchable database of classes and symbols.
Continue reading “Dusting off A 20-Year-Old Delphi Documentation Generator”After Nearly a Week of Pissing Around, I Finally Got Delphi to Display a Downloaded, Local PDF on iOS When Sandboxed
Computer programs have become more complex and connected to the world via “always-on” connections…. and due to the constant threat of new internet exploits, Operating systems are a frustrating, moving target.
As a result, certain things that worked on the last version of an operating system are banned in the next, and the churn is often miserable, especially if you’re a small company with limited resources. Simply keeping your app available on the Apple App Store requires regular maintenance, periodic updates, and frustrating amounts of your time.
I finally got my client’s PDF Reporting functionality restored in their iOS app and the solution was very simple, although it required trial and error. In fairness, the solution for iOS was much simpler than the Android solution that I had to figure out a few months back. If you need help with Android, fire me a comment and I’ll possibly update this blog.
Continue reading “After Nearly a Week of Pissing Around, I Finally Got Delphi to Display a Downloaded, Local PDF on iOS When Sandboxed”Delphi 10.4.1 is an Inadequate, Last-Ditch Effort
I think this image metaphorically illustrates the situation surrounding Delphi 10.4.1. High-speed police chases… they happen basically every day. They all end the same.
The “bad guys” always seem to have such confidence when they are speeding down the highway at 90mph. Unfortunately for them, they are typically not looking into the sky, and therefore do not notice that they are royally f*cked by the chopper following them with infrared cameras. They also are unaware that the cops have already coordinated spike strips 10 blocks ahead, and they are about to lose their tires.
Arrogant and ignorant, they barrel on as-if they believe they can get away and evade judgement…
RadStudio/Delphi 10.4.1 Released without a Big Fat Apology Letter Attached
I was going through my spam email, and came across a typical spam from Embarcadero that made me throw up in my mouth a little.
Instead of releasing 10.4.1 hot on the heels of the horribly failed Rad Studio 10.4, Embarcadero is trying to “sell” it to customers who don’t have a support/upgrade agreement in place.
This is just sick and wrong.
Continue reading “RadStudio/Delphi 10.4.1 Released without a Big Fat Apology Letter Attached”