DelphiDabbler's Blog

You couldn't make this up. No sooner had I released CodeSnip 4 release candidate 2 to correct a nasty bug relating to snippet display names than I read a comment in the blog about another new, and even worse, bug. This one affects clean installs of CodeSnip , i.e. installs where there was no previous version of the program installed. It would either crash on start-up or to look into a permanent loop using a lot of processor time. Bad because it means no new users could install it. This bug goes back to beta 2. I've rushed out a patch for this problem - CodeSnip 4 release candidate 3 . You can get this on SourceForge or download it direct from my website . If you are using any of the betas or release candidates you really SHOULD update now . I find it strange that no-one has reported this until now, and that I didn't find this bug while testing the installer. But at least it got reported before the final version gets released - big thanks to the anon reporter. I guess pe...

Well, this is embarrassing. Only a few days after CodeSnip 4 RC 1 became available I've discovered a nasty bug that causes the user interface to crash if more than one snippet has the same display name. The bug also applies to Beta 1 and Beta 2 . It's really nasty for two reasons: Its easy to trigger the bug. All you have to do is to accept an edit where you have created a display name that duplicates an existing one. Once you've pressed OK its too late. Worse, if you duplicate a snippet CodeSnip automatically duplicates the display name if the snippet has one. Once again pressing OK is all that's needed. Because the bug is reported as a fatal error, CodeSnip helpfully tries to save the database before terminating. In the case of this bug it usually succeeds, which means the duplicate display name is saved in the database. When CodeSnip is restarted it instantly crashes again because its UI can't display the duplicate display names. I've rushed out a fix ...

Now that SourceForge are promoting their new Allura forge and are encouraging projects to move to it, I thought it was time to dip my toe in the water. I have a tiny project called CompFileDate (a file date comparison utility) that I keep on SourceForge mainly as a test-bed. I thought I'd migrate that to try out the new platform before taking the plunge and migrating the much larger CodeSnip project. Here are my first impressions. The new interface is very clean and looks promising. But it is quite inconsistent and the menus change between a simple clear menu bar on some pages to a kind of toolbar on other pages. Here's part of the menu as displayed when viewing the summary page. And now here's what it looks like when the Wiki item is clicked: Not only has the style changed but, in the first menu you get to the download files page from the "Files" item. In the second menu you get there from "Downloads". It confused the hell out of me at the start, and...

For a time now the web based Code Snippets Database has been lagging behind the CodeSnip program in the kinds of snippets it can understand and include in compilable units. The compromise position was that it would display any snippet, but would not include some of them in compiled units. These included: Overloaded functions and procedures Simple types Constants CodeSnip 4 is due to make matters worse by introducing class / advanced record types and units, neither of which this venerable web app can handle. It's a lot of work to bring the database up to date, so I've decided to replace it with an all-new Web 2.0 app . In the meantime, I've decided to restrict the old app to displaying only those snippets it understands. In effect, it is now compatible with the CodeSnip 2 way of handling the online database. Sorry if this is inconvenient. If you need the full database, please download the latest version of CodeSnip, which can display everything and can also create unit...

When updating the Code Snippets Database , I have always maintained compatibility with all versions of my CodeSnip program: as many snippets as possible have been available in all versions of CodeSnip. As CodeSnip has developed, and more and more features have been added, supporting them all has become something of a burden. So I've decided to stop releasing snippets that support CodeSnip v2 and earlier from the end of the year. This means that, as of 1st January 2013, any new snippets added to the database will not be visible in CodeSnip v2 and earlier. Existing snippets will continue to be available - I'm not planning to take anything down that's already there. If you're one of the few remaining users of the early CodeSnip versions it's really time to update . There are differences between snippets used in CodeSnip v3 and the new v4, but these are much easier to manage, and so all snippets will continue to be available for both versions, unless they need the...