Visual-studio – the best alternative IDE for Delphi (.NET)

debuggingdelphiemacsidevisual studio

I work in Delphi 2007 (both win32 and .Net) but the CodeGear IDE frequently annoys me, so if possible I'd like to find a replacemnt.

We have a build script so I can compile from the command line and I very rarely do any GUI designing, so the only thing I need is a text editor (with syntax highlighting, Autocomplete/Intellisense …).

I would like to use Visual Studio or Emacs but don't know how feasible it is to work on Delphi code in those environments. Particularly debugging – can the Delphi IDE still act as my debugger even if I don't use it for editing?

Does anyone have any experience of breaking away from RAD studio?

P.S. I am aware of the new Delphi Prism but that won't solve my problems – I still need to work in vanilla Delphi and use the Delphi 2007 compiler.

Best Answer

One thing you can do is to put in GExperts to make your life better. alt text
(source: gexperts.org)

alt text
(source: gexperts.org)