Welkom RAD Studio, Delphi en C++Builder 12.2 Athens!

Embarcadero is very excited to announce RAD Studio 12.2 Athens along with Delphi 12.2 and C++Builder 12.2 is available to customers starting today. The RAD Studio 12.2 Athens release offers our first Generative AI integration in the IDE, a new template library for web development, significant feature enhancements to the new C++ Win64 Clang–based compiler and toolchain, new Delphi compilers built as 64-bit apps, and more. In this blog post, we are highlighting the key enhancements of this release and providing links with further information.

Table of Contents

Key New Features in RAD STUDIO 12.2

Runtime Packages, Compile Speed and More for the Modernized C++ Compiler and Toolchain

Following the release of the new Clang-based C++ compiler for Win64 in RAD Studio 12.1, the new update adds significant features to the new C++ toolchain, including consumption and production of runtime packages, support for all RAD Studio component packages, parallelized CPU-saturating batch compilation (with support for the ––jobs parameter) giving incredible compile performance, and an extensive focus on quality for the compiler and RTL libraries. As in previous 12 releases, the older C++ Win64 toolchain remains available alongside the new one.

This is how you enable runtime packages in the new C++ toolchain:

64-bit Version of Delphi Windows compilers

RAD Studio 12.2 includes the 64-bit binary version of the Delphi Win32 and Win64 compilers, offering the ability to build extremely large applications as a single executable, given the 64-bit memory space of the new compilers. These new compilers are currently available from the command line and from the IDE when using external compilation. They are only included as part of the Enterprise and Architects editions, given the focus on customers with very large codebases. Here is how you enable the use of the external 64-bit Delphi compilers in the Project Options dialog box:

It is worth noting that the new C++ Clang compiler has been a 64-bit binary since its release in RAD Studio 12.0.

Smart CodeInsight: AI Powered Coding

Leveraging AI LLMs for coding is becoming increasingly popular and the quality of these tools is getting better. For this reason, RAD Studio 12.2 introduces an open architecture for AI plugins, offering ready-to-use support for three online solutions (OpenAI, Gemini by Google, and Claude by Anthropic) and one offline solution (Ollama). Here you can see the new Smart CodeInsight configuration pane in the Tools Options dialog box:

This architecture offers multiple goals: everything is optional and disabled by default; we make available multiple providers and let you choose which one or ones you want to enable; we include a locally installed, offline solution for maximum privacy. This is different from what other IDEs provide, pushing you towards a single proprietary solution or brokering to one of the backends without your control. With Smart CodeInsight, you decide if and how to use AI, and you can even create additional plugins for your preferred solution, as long as it offers a public REST API to invoke.

The RAD Studio IDE surfaces the new AI tooling in two different ways. First, There is a general purpose AI chat pane you can dock:

Second, there is a new editor menu, with multiple commands you can issue on the selected code:

Editor Enhancements: Focus Mode and Scrollbar Annotations

There are times when you are writing code and don’t want to be distracted by the many IDE panes and features. The new RAD Studio Focus Mode accomplishes that: it leaves the IDE with the editor(s) only, so you can avoid interruptions to your flow of thoughts:

Another very useful feature is the new 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, as you can see here:

We have also focused quality improvements on the recently introduced Split Views, plus the IDE Toolbar and HighDPI.

WebStencils Template Library

RAD Studio version 12.2 introduces WebStencils, a server-side script-based integration and processing of HTML files to the WebBroker and RAD Server technologies. This flexible feature empowers you to develop modern websites based on any JavaScript library, powered by the data extracted and processed by a RAD Studio server-side application. It gives you the freedom to create websites that suit your unique needs.

WebStencils’ main goal is to help with navigational websites by adopting web technologies (WebBroker, DataSnap, RAD Server) and providing server-side scripting. For instance, you can use WebStencils to generate HTML pages with standard tools and adopt any CSS and JavaScript libraries while retaining the ability to add data from the generated pages coming from the Delphi or C++Builder application, like the result of a database query.

Here you can see sample code used to pass an object (in this case a ClientDataSet) to a script, giving it the specific name “dataset”:

Here is the matching sample script, which cycles over each record of the dataset and adds some of the field values in the HTML code:

This results in a web page like the following:

In addition, WebStencils can be a good foundation for HTMX as a web development solution. HTMX pages benefit from server-side code generation and hook into REST servers for content updates. Delphi web technologies offer page generation and REST APIs at a very high quality level.

C++Builder Visual Assist Integration

The Visual Assist integration has been expanded with new features including three new refactorings: Introduce Variable, Create From Usage and Extract Method. In addition, there are significant quality and stability improvements. Here is the dialog of the Introduce Variable refactoring:

And here is the dialog for the Extract method one:

Improved Mobile Development and external libraries linking

RAD Studio 12.2 has significant improvements for Delphi mobile development, for both iOS and Android. To better support Apple platforms, we have updated the linker to the most recent version, so that it’s now possible to link iOS static libraries written in Xcode, like for example Firebase iOS SDK.

In terms of Android support, to give our customers more control over the packaging and deployment, we added options to Compress Dex files and Compress native library files in the toolchain in the Android Project options. In addition, for Android, the targetSdkVersion of the Android manifest file can now be configured in the Project Options dialog. We have also added the ability to import Android libraries (‘.aar’ files), which works, for example, with the Facebook SDK for Android and Firebase Analytics.

Quality Improvements in RAD STUDIO 12.2

Debugger Quality

We have several improvements in the various RAD Studio debuggers. Most notably, the Delphi debugger will now correctly handle repeated inline variables with the same name, as you can see here:

We’ve also improved the debugger error handling and the remote debuggers communication timeouts.

Delphi LSP

The Delphi Language Serve Protocol engine powering CodeInsight has been expanded with core groundwork and a focus on better resolving and navigating symbols, including symbols in the class interface, including fields, local constants and variables, and forward type declarations. We addressed many requests including some related to Delphi multiline strings. In addition, RAD Studio 12.2 includes a 64-bit version of the DelphiLSP engine, which offers better support for large codebases, having no memory limits. As with the 64-bit versions of the Delphi compilers, this feature is only available in the Enterprise and Architects editions.

Delphi RTL, VCL, and FireMonkey Quality

RAD Studio 12.2 has dozens of improvements to the core Delphi RTL and to both the VCL and FireMonkey UI libraries. Worth calling out are the new TParallelArray and TOrderedDictionary classes of the RTL; VCL quality work around frames scaling, FormsTabBar, styling issues, and High DPI issues; FMX intensive quality work for many areas, with additional focus on edit controls on mobile,

RAD Server Improvements

Besides the WebStencils integration, which adds Web development to the Web Service development capabilities of RAD Server, in 12.2 RAD Server extends the Swagger Documentation support with custom metadata, API filtering, YAML format, and Delphi multiline string literals.

Quality Overall

In RAD Studio 12.2, we implemented quality improvements for 88 support tickets, 35o Quality Portal tickets from customers (logged on the old or the new portal), and 28 customer feature requests.

Ready to Go

Product trials for RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder 12.2 are now available and the updated product builds are live in the online store. Customers on Update Subscription can download and install RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder 12.2 today using their existing license and will receive an email announcing the new release availability. Downloads are available in the customers portal at https://my.embarcadero.com.

For more information, you can check the following links:

A Fantastic Release

We are very happy with the work our team did for RAD Studio 12.2 Athens and we are certain you’ll equally enjoy using this new version of RAD Studio, C++Builder, and Delphi.

Welkom RAD Studio, Delphi en C++Builder 12.2 Athens!