Hi John, I use Delphi inside a VM for the last four years except my VMs are hosted on a Mac (MacBook Pro to be precise) using VMWare Fusion (the mac equivalent to VMWare Workstation). My answers are embedded below under each of your questions.
On 29 April 2013 10:17, John Bird <[email protected]> wrote: > > Checking the options: > > Q1 – is there any advantage to running the Delphi IDE in a 64 bit > environment (ie is any of the IDE 64 bit), or is 32 bit fine. Have D2007 > and XE2 at present. Likely to upgrade to whatever upcoming version allows > Android development to save having to learn Java etc, and also Objective C > for iPhone. (As long as its feasible and workable that is) > Delphi works in either 32-bit or 64-bit Windows. You can still develop 64-bit Windows applications on a 32-bit Windows machine but you won't be able to run the applications on your computer except through using the remote debugger to a host machine running 64-bit Windows. So unless you are planning to develop 64-bit Windows apps you can stick to 32-bit Windows. > > Q2 – related – if I run a Delphi IDE VM in VMWare workstation any versions > of VMWare are there any advantages of 32bit 64bit versions of Windows > VMs? At present plans would be to run 32 Windows 7 VM – unless there is a > reason to do otherwise (eg 64 bit). At present VMWare 6 or 7. If base > PC is Windows 8 64 bit does this change anything – ie better to get later > VMWare workstation 8 or 9? > > I have Delphi 2010 in a Win XP (32-bit) VM and Delphi XE2 in a Win7 (64-bit) VM. I've found no difference in containing Delphi in either environments except that 64-bit windows requires a larger size VM (40-60GB) vs 32-bit XP (8-12GB). As I don't plan to do anything in 64-bit at the moment, I think I will stick to 32-bit Windows VMs. The only reason why I may use a 64-bit Windows VM is if I require to install the latest version Visual Studio which I think requires 64-bit Windows 7 as a minimum. But for plain old Delphi (any version) then I would stick with a 32-bit VM as it requires less space. Related to Q1, if you do decide to build 64-bit Windows applications, you can still use a 32-bit Windows VM so long as your host PC is running 64-bit Windows. In this case, you can then use your host PC as the environment to run your 64-bit app in remote debug mode. > Q3 – any advantages of Windows 7 vs Windows 8 > No idea - I've bought Win8 but still haven't installed it yet. > > Q4 – Delphi IDE in host or VM pros and cons. I have seen that many > recommend running Delphi IDE in a VM. Personally I in the past favoured > running Delphi IDE on the host PC but open to being convinced otherwise. > > pros of Delphi IDE on host PC: > a – Faster and simpler operation on host PC (one less layer to go > wrong) > b – if few extra installed components quick to uninstall and > reinstall whole of Delphi if something goes wrong. > > pros of VM: > a – make a standard setup VM > b – can reset to standard setup VM > My Mac has an Intel i7 Processor with 8GB RAM runniing on an SSD. It is fast enough to run my VM with other (Mac) applications running in other processes. It has never felt slow actually I've found it to be quite fast. Especially the fact that I rarely actually "shut down" my VM. I usually "suspend" it when I quit my VMs. When I restart my VM, it opens up to where I last left it which is usually a matter of seconds. Other advantages of using VMs is that I only have one version of Delphi in a VM so I never have any problems which conflicting versions of Delphi in the one environment. Even though I use a Mac, I would still consider using a VM if my host was a Windows PC as the convenience of having a "clean" development which can be snapshot, rewound, and in some cases transportable is incredibly handy. Regards, Colin
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