RAD Studio 12.2: Every New and Enhanced Feature

Five months after the release of RAD Studio 12.1 release and 10 months after the release of RAD Studio 12, RAD Studio 12.2 builds on the strong customer reception of the landmark release and points the IDE toward new horizons, like AI-enabled coding and 64-bit versions of compilers for enterprise applications.

Here’s a look at every new and enhanced feature in RAD Studio 12.2.

New

New! Smart CodeInsight offers AI Powered Coding helpers. Smart CodeInsight is an open architecture for AI plugins. Smart CodeInsight UI elements in the IDE include a chat pane and an editor menu with direct commands on the selected code. Smart CodeInsight offers an OpenTools API and developers can write plugins for additional LLM engines and APIs.

New! Smart CodeInsight ready-to-use support for three online solutions (OpenAI, Gemini by Google, and Claude by Anthropic) and one offline solution (Ollama). AI plugins can be selectively enabled and configured in a specific Tools Options page, where you can also set the default plugin for the chat and the editor.

New! 64-bit binary versions of the Delphi 32-bit (dcc32) and Delphi 64-bit (dcc64) command line compilers, offering a very large memory address space.

New! 64-bit binary version of the Delphi LSP engine, to allow parsing a very large project with no memory constraints.

New! Win64 C++ Clang parallelised CPU-saturating batch compilation with –jobs.

New! Win64 C++ Clang support for consumption and production of runtime packages.

New! Three new refactorings powered by Visual Assist: Introduce Variable, Create From Usage and Extract Method.

New! RAD Studio Focus Mode (aka ‘zen mode’) leaves the IDE with the editor(s) only, with reduced, essential-only UI, so you can avoid interruptions to your flow of thoughts, and do not become distracted by the many IDE panes and features.

New! With scrollbar annotations, the editor scrollbar shows at a glance the sections of the code which have been modified, have bookmarks, have errors or warnings, and much more. This is powered by an OpenTools API and can be enhanced by developers.

Enhanced

Enhanced! New C++ compiler for Win64. Based on Clang 15, UCRT for the C runtime, a mix of LLVM and MinGW for the C++ runtime, and LLVM’s libc++ STL. The new toolchain is fully integrated in the product (bcc64x).

Enhanced! IDE support for adding Java classes to an Android app classes.dex library and customizing it. In 12.2 we added options to Compress Dex files and Compress native library files, configure targetSdkVersion of the Android manifest file, and added the ability to import Android libraries (‘.aar’ files).

Enhanced! Editor split views: multiple editors side by side, above/below each other; split editors allow same file to be edited next to itself, keep both a design and a code view on screen.

Enhanced! New Delphi Code Insight implementation (based on the Language Server Protocol architecture, or Delphi LSP) for including Code Completion, Parameter Completion, Error Insight, Find Declaration, and Tooltip/Help Insight. Enhancements include support for include files, better lifetime management of the agent processes, numerous fixes, and increased performance. In 12.x, code completion again includes language keywords and code templates, the ability to customize the behavior of specific acceptance keys, while 12.2 has improvements in auto completion and navigating symbols in the class interface and forwarded type declarations.

Enhanced! Debugger for C++ for Win64, based on LLDB, including formatters to evaluate common complex types like UnicodeString and AnsiString, C++ strings, vectors, deques, and more.

Enhanced! Debugging support for the Clang 15 Win64 C++ compiler, with support for PDB debug info.

Enhanced! WebStencils server-side script-based integration and processing of HTML files, to develop modern websites based on any JavaScript library, powered by the data extracted and processed by a RAD Studio server-side application. This is a new, sophisticated architecture introduced in RAD Studio 12.2.

Enhanced! Use the WebStencils components, TWebStencilsProcessor and TWebStencilsEngine, to customize the template engine, control the file locations and the URL mapping, define URL parameters, and pass objects, datasets and collections to the scripts. The TWebStencilProcessor component implements the same interface of the old TPageProducer used in WebBroker and DataSnap and can replace it.

Enhanced! WebStencils integration in RAD Server by combining the existing TEMSFileResource component with a TWebStencilsEngine component.

Enhanced! Support for declaring and retrieving EMS metadata, based on the Swagger open API initiative (http://swagger.io). This allows the use of the metadata language as YAML or JSON for the representation of the EMS REST API. Initial documentation generation is  optional on the RAD Server module wizard. 12.2 adds support for custom metadata in Swagger and API filtering.

Enhanced! InterBase 2020 Update 6 Developer Edition – up to 20 users and 80 logical connections.

Enhanced! IBLite 2020 Update 6 for Windows with unlimited deployment license.

Enhanced! IBLite 2020 Update 6 for macOS, iOS, and Android, with unlimited deployment license.

Enhanced! Free InterBase ToGo Deployment License for mobile platforms. A yearly subscription for unlimited deployment across desktop and mobile is available as a separate purchase.

Enhanced! IBConsole, the integrated InterBase configuration and management tool, recently updated to HighDPI and with an improved UI.

Enhanced! AWS SDK for Delphi by Appercept*, with support for multiple AWS services, continually expanded over time.
* Available for download in the GetIt Package Manager (requires an active Update Subscription)

Enhanced! In addition, there are a number of exclusive components in the GetIt Package manager, for Dephi and / or C++. You can check https://getitnow.embarcadero.com/ to see what is currently available (some of the exclusive items might be limited to higher end SKUs).

Enhanced! For a detailed discussion and run-through of what you can expect from the new Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio edition, click on the banner below to watch the on-demand Launch Webinar.