What are your indispensable Delphi libraries? The 3rd party libraries you just can’t imagine starting a new project without? I know mine have changed over the years and we have an interesting new crop of libraries in recent years. I listed some unit testing libraries recently, but thought it would be useful to focus on general purpose libraries (as opposed to visual component suits). Here are some open source libraries I either find myself using a lot, or I look forward to using:
- JEDI Code Library (JCL) – JEDI project started out with the mission of header translations, but has since expanded grately. The JCL is a huge collection of utility functions and classes covering all sorts of functionality. Sometimes I wish it were broken into smaller chunks so I could just download the code I need, but there are advantages to having it all in one place too. The Github repository is updated for XE5. (See also JVCL)
- The old TurboPower projects:TurboPower Abbrevia, TurboPower Async Professional, TurboPower Async Professional CLX, TurboPower B-Tree Filer, TurboPower Essentials, TurboPower FlashFiler,TurboPower Internet Professional, TurboPower LockBox, TurboPower Object Professional, TurboPower OfficePartner, TurboPower ShellShock, TurboPower String Resource Manager, TurboPower SysTools, TurboPower SysTools for Kylix, TurboPower Visual PlanIt, TurboPower XML Partner. This includes both visual and non-visual components, but I thought it was worth mentioning all of them at once. I’ve used a number of these at different times. Thanks to the work of Roman and others they are still regularly updated to work with the latest versions of Delphi.
Delphi-Coll is a large collection of collections. The new generic collections introduced in Delphi 2009 are amazing, and this library picks up where they left off.- Spring4D and DSharp are the other two libraries that Nick Hodges covers in his book. Unlike the ones I mentioned before, they are not directly related to unit testing. These are both maintained by Stefan Glienke.
- Delphi OOP – I’m really intrigued by the Futures support it includes.
- OmniThreadLibrary – Is the hugely popular and successful threading library by MVP Primož Gabrijel?i?. If you need some advanced threading check it out, and his book on the subject.
- Delphi OpenWire – I’ve seen some fabulous demos of OpenWire, but have not yet used it. In fact, Mitov Software has a number of really amazing look libraries.
I’m sure there are a lot that I am missing . . . What would you add to my list?
