Embarcadero RAD Studio 2016 Product Approach and Roadmap

[Brovin Yaroslav]

As we enter into 2016, the team is very excited by what lies ahead.  We have development in process right now and a lot of great plans and ideas for the second half of 2016 and beyond.  Before we focus on the future, let's first take a second to reflect on many of the great product updates and other changes that occurred in 2015.

 

RAD Studio 10 Seattle is a fantastic version that will serve as foundation to all we do in the next few years.  If you have not moved to 10 Seattle now is the time to do it and as long as you have Update Subscription, you will automatically get new updates and releases as they come out. Windows 10 support is of course the highlight and the new styles & features provide terrific ways to refresh and monetize your apps. However, 2015 delivered much more…

 

 

• Windows 10 Support

• Large Memory Model IDE

• New Clang-enhanced C++11 for 32-bit Windows

• iOS 64-bit & Universal App Support

• Beacon Proximity Support

• GetIt Package Manager Introduction

• Multi-Monitor IDE Support

• Extensions to Version Insight for SVN, Mercurial and GIT

• Introduction of AppAnalytics

 

The changes in ownership in 2015 allowed our team to have a new look at the product strategy and roadmap. We actively reached out to partners and customers to understand what is working, what is not working, what you like, and what you don’t like. You told us you want fewer major releases, more seamless updates / upgrades, higher quality, better language support, and more mobile native controls. As you will see and hear, we are making adjustments both in the short and long term to align with these requests.

 

 

We have a lot of development underway, which cannot all be accomplished within a single release or update. In the Spring development track, code named "Big Ben”, the key themes are quality & first user experience and installation. A new installer leverages our GetIt technology to provide you flexibility to choose what you want to install and reduces installation time.  The team is working the following features that will be included in 2016 releases:

• Separate or floating form designer for VCL & FMX

• Refactoring in C++

• FireUI App Preview - preview your forms on any target (desktop and mobile) while using the form designer in the IDE

• FireMonkey Enhancements for Windows, Mac and mobile

• Address Book/Contacts component

• Style Designer & ListView Items Designer

• Numerous other features including ListView touch animation, grid improvements, Windows accelerator key support, font enhancements and more

• Multi-Device Designer Improvements

• Including Form Designer Preview on Device

• Android Wear Styling & new FireUI views

• IoT or Internet of Things

• Extended Bluetooth LE support

• IoT connectivity framework that turns off-the-shelf and custom IoT smart devices, sensors, and wearables into easy-to-use API components

• Support for Bluetooth LE and Z-Wave device components

• ThingPoint - Enterprise access points for your IoT devices which extends EMS functionality

• Window/VCL

• Improvement to WinRT bridge including Bluetooth LE support for Windows 10

• DirectX 12 Support

• Delphi Compiler & Language

• Native support for Utf8String type on all platforms

• Support for weak and unsafe interface references on non-ARC platforms, like Windows

• C++ CLANG 3.3 on all platforms

• FireDAC Driver Updates - including Oracle, DB2, Interbase, SQLite, and Advantage

 

The second development track, code named “Godzilla,” will deliver a Fall release. It will enable you to develop Delphi and C++ applications to run on Linux Server. This is a much anticipated addition to our product and a result of over two years of development. We intend to release a tech preview sometime this summer of the Delphi for Linux Server technology to give developers a chance to try it for a while, give us feedback and help us ensure it is as stable and solid as possible.  Here are some further details on what we are aiming for with the initial Fall release:

 

• Apache modules in WebBroker and support for DataSnap and EMS

• FireDAC Linux database access

• Linux platform support for console apps with IoT support

• We will formally support Ubuntu Server & RedHat Enterprise. We will extend the formally supported Linux distributions list over time as demand dictates

• Windows based IDE with cross-compiler, deploy and debug via PAServer

• Linux compilers will be for Intel 64-bit server, LLVM-based and ARC-enabled

 

While Linux will be the cornerstone of the Fall release, we have a huge list of other features we want to add to the product, some of which are outlined below in the roadmap image.  We have also defined general areas of priority since an image can only convey so much data.  

• IDE UI improvements and styling

• Update of all C++ compilers to newer versions of Clang

• Further improvements for GetIt, both for the package manager and the installer

• New Windows 10 VCL controls

• More FireMonkey platform native control support

• Windows 10 Centennial support (pending Microsoft release of the Centennial Universal Windows Platform bridge)

• Support for coming versions of iOS and Android

 

As we are in the detailed planning stages for this release, we will share additional details as we get further into 2016.  If you have specific items or questions, please let the Product Management team know and we can talk or you can log ideas and enhancement requests as well at quality.embarcadero.com.

 

The RAD Studio Product Management Team

 

 

These plans and roadmap represent our intentions as of this date, but our development plans and priorities are subject to change.

Accordingly, we can’t offer any commitments or other forms of assurance that we’ll ultimately release any or all of the above-described products on the schedule or in the order described, or at all. These general indications of development schedules or “product roadmaps” should not be interpreted or construed as any form of a commitment, and our customers’ rights to upgrades, updates, enhancements and other maintenance releases will be set forth only in the applicable software license agreement.

 

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