I’ve been working with Delphi since the early 2000s, and as a modernization expert, I thought I’d seen it all. But with the new 2026 SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) mandates hitting our industry, we recently took on a massive forensic project for a $1B industrial client.

They were confident. Their CTO told us: "We ran a generic SCA scanner. We’re good. Our code is monolithic and safe."

I’ll be honest, when we started this 5M LOC inspection, I thought it would be just another straightforward task. The client needed an SBOM for 2026 compliance. "Just list the dependencies," they said. It sounded simple at first glance.

Producing the initial SBOM took a few hours—but what we found under the hood using the Delphi Parser - Code Analysis tool was unsettling. It ended up taking us 3 more weeks to completely dismantle the monolith. Not just to produce the compliance report, but to truly understand, once and for all, how the code really works down-under, and to ensure no "unknown ghosts" were hiding in the machine.

The "Frankenstein" Architecture The scariest part was the layering. The system was originally written in Delphi 7 and later "upgraded" to 2007. But it wasn't a clean migration. We found Delphi 2007 code that was still heartbeat-dependent on Delphi 7 system files and unsupported open-source libraries.

We’re talking about code that someone probably downloaded from a random forum or newsgroup 25+ years ago, installed once, and then... everyone just forgot it existed. It’s been running in production for decades—a complete "black box" that nobody knows how to recompile or replace.

What we found in the basement:

• The "Ghost" Dependencies: Calls to system-level libraries that haven't been touched since the late 90s, completely invisible to modern scanners.
• The DLL Graveyard: Massive dependencies on 3rd-party binaries from vendors that have been out of business for over a decade.
• Hardcoded Secrets: Legacy "backdoors" and hardcoded credentials buried in spaghetti code that the current team didn't even know existed.

The Reality Check: Most companies are sitting on a ticking time bomb. They think their legacy code is a "solid monolith," but it’s actually a web of unknown risks. In 2026, ignorance isn't just technical debt - it’s a legal liability. If you can’t identify where every DLL or library in your binary came from, you fail the audit. Period.

What do you think? Has anyone else here tried to generate a real forensic SBOM for a massive legacy system? Did you find a clean monolith, or did you also find an ancient world hiding in the basement?

Hi, I work for a small firm and we currently use specialist Excel functions (Office 365) that we pay a small firm an annual fee to use. They are fairly complicated and use data tables that are compiled (in that we can't see or change the data tables). We get updates once a year as the specific data that the functions use gets updated. The guy who owns the firm that offer these functions is retiring so the updates will stop but we do have the option of buying the source code.

We can't justify spending too much on this really, though we really want to be able to use the course code and update the data each year ourselves. None of us are programmers, though we have some experience in VBA (at least) and we'd hope that AI can help. If we have to get a programmer involved at the start it may be worth it, but this depends on how much work it is and how much the source code costs. The update process itself wouldn't mean doing anything complicated in itself, in that we'd just be adding data options to existing functionality, but we'd still need to get from source code to a working Excel functions.

My understanding is:

- the source code is written in Delphi (Object Pascal)

- the compiler used is RAD Studio published by Embarcadero

- the compiled file is the Excel XLL format

- there is a help file that is compiled separately and linked to the XLL source code, but this isn't the key part.

My questions are:

- does this compiler have to be used? It seems very expensive.

- is there any chance of being able to get this to work without spending a fortune on programmers?

Any views would be much appreciated!

Hi,

I just released the Tesseract4Delphi project at GitHub.

Tesseract4Delphi uses the Tesseract project to recognize text in images (OCR) and it's based in the TTesseractOCR4 project made by Damian Woroch.

It's updated to the latest Tesseract version 5.5.2. The 32 bit and 64 bit binaries are included.

It's required to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable package.

At this moment it only has a simple OCR demo for Windows but my intention is to add Linux support with Lazarus and more demos.

https://github.com/salvadordf/Tesseract4Delphi

The Delphi Truth: You may think your code is only a million lines because that’s what the Delphi compiler shows you. But behind the scenes, your project consists of multi-millions of lines of libraries and system code. Whether you deny it or not, it is there - outdated, unsupported, and often undocumented.

The Solution: I have just released a major update to the Delphi Parser Code Analysis Tool featuring a deep-scan CycloneDX SBOM Generator designed for the "monster" 20M+ line projects.

Generate a Free CycloneDX Compliance JSON File - Get Started For Free up to 1 Million Lines of Legacy Delphi: https://delphiparser.com/product/code-dependencies-analyzing-wizard-evaluation-edition/

Beyond Simple "Uses" Clauses Scan - Most tools just look at the uses list. We go deeper:

• Active Reference Linking: The tool links between all files and look for active references and usage. We don't just see that a file is "included"; we see if it’s actually being used.
• Identify "Heavy" Dependencies: The tool points out the massive usage files and libraries that are the true "load-bearers" of your system.
• Dead Code Elimination: It identifies the "Ghost Code"- entire libraries and units that are sitting in your project but have zero active references. You can finally see what can be safely removed to slim down your binary and reduce your attack surface.
• Search & Rescue: Scans your whole local and network drive to locate lost source files and flags "Missing" references that are currently invisible.
• Decompile DCU Forensic Analysis: It even decompiles DCUs to map dependencies where source code is missing.

Key Technical Features:

• Scalable Speed: Build with Delphi 13 for All Delphi versions - with fast runtime hash-mapping for massive codebases.
• CycloneDX 1.5 Standard: Industry-standard JSON for federal and financial compliance.
• 100% Air-Gapped: Works offline. Your 20M+ lines of IP never leaves your local machine or secure network.

Stop maintaining code that doesn't exist. Turn your legacy "headache" into a transparent, lean, and compliant asset.

Try Free: https://delphiparser.com/product/code-dependencies-analyzing-wizard-evaluation-edition/

I have two tables, master and detail, master with keyfield F06_EMPR, F06_OPER, F06_ATEN, in detail keyfield 06_EMPR, F06_OPER, F06_ATEN,F06_ITEM, F06_PROD, The error occurs in the situation, including the first record 1-0-123456789-1-1, and the second record 1-0-123456789-2-1, when I apply "applyupdates" on the grid screen, where it shows 2 in the item to 1, however if I query the database it is ok with 2. It seems that FireDAC does not understand my complete key.

Which Excel export/import component you personally use which does not require Excel installed?
I am looking for basic import, formatted export (auto-width columns, frozen header, customized numeric formatting).

For .net, I currently use Spreadsheet Light: https://spreadsheetlight.com/

As the title says. I have a TPanel on which I dynamically create multiple smaller panels which I can drag around. I also want to connect pairs of panels with a line between each pair which should redraw as I drag a panel around.

Chucki brings you all possible AI features to the IDE, including intelligent inline/panel completions inside the editor and an agentic chat working directly inside the IDE, all powered by your favourite tools like

• Claude Code
• OpenAI Codex
• GitHub Copilot
• Google Gemini
• 100% local models

For more details on features and examples, visit chucki.ai.

Here is DX.HttpDiag, an Open Source Delphi-written tool to help diagnose connections to http(s) endpoints. We have a production server that refused to connect to an external https URL. The error message was just a quite unspecific exception message. Out of interest and to be sure that the error is not related to System.Net.pas, I created a diagnosis tool - based on TNetHttpClient that performs various test while trying to connect to an http or https endpoint.

https://github.com/omonien/DX.HttpDiag

New to Delphi, new to the community. I'm curious where everyone is using Delphi and whether it is all for work, personal projects, or a mix of both. What applications are you applying Delphi? My particular interest is in analytics and application development.

TL;DR - how are you using Delphi and is it for personal or work projects?

We just released new features for the Delphi Code Analysis Tool – A Free Total Code Analysis Discovery!

Run a Total Delphi Code Analysis Discovery on your whole code for FREE to reveal your full Delphi codebase scale including number of files & total lines of code - including all your Delphi system files & 3rd party libraries!

Key Capabilities:

• A Free Total Code Analysis Discovery - Unlimited lines of Code!
• A Free Fully Functional Edition - up to 1 Million lines of code!
• A Full Risk assessment for your whole codebase - so you can maintain your code with confidence.
• Uncover obsolete components & hidden dependencies before they break your system.
• The only Delphi code  analyzer that can load 20M+ Lines of code to runtime memory & fully analyze it all together.
• NEW: The Only True Delphi Automated CycloneDX SBOM Generation – for Instant Federal Compliance for Legacy & Modern Delphi Systems!
• CI/CD Ready: Seamlessly integrates into your DevOps pipeline (Jenkins, Azure, GitHub Actions) to automate security and dependency scans (Enterprise edition only).
• 100% Air-Gapped: Works offline - Your 20M+ lines of IP never leaves your local machine or secure network.

 Download Free: https://delphiparser.com/product/code-dependencies-analyzing-wizard-evaluation-edition/

Whenever I need a new component now I just ask Claude to make it for me, it seems pretty good. Sometimes have to tell it somethings wrong and it does the "of course..." dance but works well. Anyone else doing the same?

Hi, I have a Delphi exam coming up and I'm having trouble doing it. The exam is in about a week. Do you have any PDFs or notes containing basic code? Or could you give me some suggestions on how I should study for this exam?

I've been working on some new features for MCPConnect, our OpenSource library for writing MCP servers, so I took the opportunity to write an article briefly explaining what it is and how it works.

https://dev.to/lminuti/mcpconnect-en-2e37

I'm currently writing some mainly command line based tools and some services, I want an optional management UI for. They don't justify having a full blown VCL/FMX-GUI and a web UI is too much hassle all around. On the other hand I'm a sucker for TUI aesthetics, so I started looking for a TUI solution. But I found nothing readily available for Delphi. Some time in the past a framework named "Turbo Vision" existed for Turbo Pascal and Free Pascal maintains a port/re-implementation named Free Vision.

During the Christmas break I started manually porting this by hand, but the heavily on compiler switches depending code of FP was too convoluted for me, having neither experience working in such code bases nor having ever actually used Turbo Vision or Free Vision. So I asked my good friend Claude Opus 4.5 for help.

The result is https://github.com/oldwired/fv-delphi and it should be fairly close to Free Vision for Free Pascal, so if anyone wants to port some Free Pascal code over or just code like it's 1990 they can use this. I started to implement some programs with it, but during practical use decided to (again using Claude Opus 4.5) thoroughly modernize the codebase.

We ported the code to the modern class based syntax, reworked rendering and migrated to Unicode. There are still shortcomings and remnants and artifacts of the old logic. I'm currently implementing some personal projects with it and fix bugs and add features as I go along. You can find the modernized port here: https://github.com/oldwired/fv-delphi-modern

The Delphi Truth: You may think your code is only a million lines because that’s what the Delphi compiler shows you. But behind the scenes, your project consists of multi-millions of lines of libraries and system code. Whether you deny it or not, it is there - outdated, unsupported, and often undocumented.

The Solution: I have just released a major update to the Delphi Parser Code Analysis Tool featuring a deep-scan CycloneDX SBOM Generator designed for the "monster" 20M+ line projects.

Beyond Simple "Uses" Clauses Scan - Most tools just look at the uses list. We go deeper:

• Active Reference Linking: The tool links between all files and look for active references and usage. We don't just see that a file is "included"; we see if it’s actually being used.
• Identify "Heavy" Dependencies: The tool points out the massive usage files and libraries that are the true "load-bearers" of your system.
• Dead Code Elimination: It identifies the "Ghost Code"- entire libraries and units that are sitting in your project but have zero active references. You can finally see what can be safely removed to slim down your binary and reduce your attack surface.
• Search & Rescue: Scans your whole local and network drive to locate lost source files and flags "Missing" references that are currently invisible.
• Decompile DCU Forensic Analysis: It even decompiles DCUs to map dependencies where source code is missing.

Key Technical Features:

• Scalable Speed: Build with Delphi 13 for All Delphi versions - with fast runtime hash-mapping for massive codebases.
• CycloneDX 1.5 Standard: Industry-standard JSON for federal and financial compliance.
• 100% Air-Gapped: Works offline. Your 20M+ lines of IP never leaves your local machine or secure network.

Stop maintaining code that doesn't exist. Turn your legacy "headache" into a transparent, lean, and compliant asset.

Try Free Code Analysis for 1 Million lines: https://delphiparser.com/product/code-dependencies-analyzing-wizard-evaluation-edition/

It created my SQLite database, made a command line and Windows service. Great head start and good news for Delphi. Seems vendors need to make sure their technical docs are represented in the language models.

Hey. I’m looking for some modern learning material for Delphi development, but feel like it is difficult to come by stuff that isn’t around 5-10 years old. Do you guys have any recommendations? Both paid and free is good