[ale] UNIX equivalent of Windows DLL

[sglewis at mindspring.com]

While I am a member of the Atlanta Linux Showcase board during my
"free" time, I make a living by developing some Windows apps where
I work.  (Got to pay the bills [Not nessarily of the Gates variety]
somehow.)  We make extensive use of both Delphi and C++ Builder.

Both of these IDE's have what they call the VCL (Visual Component
Library).  This library is made up of different components that you
drag from a toolbar and drop on a form.  They have components for
database access, GUI components such as Edit Boxes, List Boxes, etc.,
components can perform ftp transfers, parse html, etc..  Programming
in this environment requires little, if any direct Win32 calls.  If
Borland is able to get the VCL components to do the same kinds of
things in Linux, you should be able to take a project created with
the Windows tool and let you recompile into a Linux program.  This
would be way cool.

While the visual method of programming takes a little getting used to
for those who are used to a command-line environment, the productivity
you can get out of a good tool is amazing.  It takes very little
effort to prototype GUI's and then to add the back end logic to do
useful stuff like database queries.  I wouldn't use a visual tool to
hack the kernel, but this could be the tool that gets people writing
the useful kinds of business applications that have given Windows
it's current place in the spotlight of corporate America.

dalavon at mindspring.com wrote:
> It will bring over thousands of apps.  There was adisscussion on /. about this a couple of weeks ago. 
Just think of all the Delphi apps that will just need
a recompile.  Think about a shop that has been using
delphi for awhile, now it will be real easy for them
to jump into the Linux sandbox.  I am not a Delphi
expert but others commented on /. that boreland for
the most part avoided win 32 specific calls with
delphi.

--- Dan Newcombe  wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Russell Enderby wrote:
> > Actually not too long ago, it was mentioned that
> Borland's entire compiler 
> > suite would be ported over to Linux.  That is my
> favorite development suite 
> > anyhow.  It will bring thousands of apps to Linux
> overnight.  Linux is in 
> > real good shape.
> 
> I don't follow the logic - how does having Borland
> compilers for linux
> bring apps over?  All the compiler does is take
> WinMain, MessageBox, and
> all the other Win32 calls and compile and link them.
>  Without having the
> win32 libraries behind it, apps would still not work
> and probably not
> compile on Linux.  Even if an app was 100% OWL
> (absolutley NO windows
> calls), the OWL would still need to be rewritten to
> not use Win32.
> 
> There are twho things that'll get "thousands of apps
> to Linux overnight".
> 	- A working Wine
> 	- ALL of Win32/MFC/ATL, etc... ported to Linux.
> 
> I'll put my money on Wine
> 
> 
> 


=====
Jim Williams
Software Developer, ICC/GRSoftware
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