CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#delphireflector
Vibeeshan Mahadeva
Vibeeshan Mahadeva

Reputation: 7248

Converting Delphi vcl.net application to c# using Reflector

I have used reflector until its trial period ended

I have decoded many applications successfully. And by my recent post i was able to identify it can also decode delphi.net vcl apps (d2007).

Can i decode delphi.net vcl and translate it to a c# application which can be compiled success fully using visual studio.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1869

Answers (2)

Misha
Misha

Reputation: 1826

The answer is no, and even if you deploy the corresponding Delphi assemblies, such as Borland.Delphi.dll and Borland.Vcl.dll, you have structures that have no equivalent in C#, such as class references, that cannot be used within Visual Studio/C#. I managed to convert about 80,000 lines of a non-visual application framework in Delphi to use in Visual Studio/C#, but it took me over 3 months and I had to convert code that used things like class references to use the System.Type class, amongst other things. After all this work, and with the deployment of some basic Delphi assemblies, an Indy assembly, and a Jcl assembly, I can now develop in either Delphi or Visual Studio and maintain communication compatibility between the two types of applications.

One other thing I did is to run some custom pre-processing of the source code before building to strip of the "T..." type prefix so that the actual framework assemblies look just like C# assemblies when used in Visual Studio. This was no easy task but was made possible by the fact that all types, constants, etc in my framework were ALL prefixed as well by either "Csi", "App", "Fwk", or "Dev". Without this I could not have stripped off the Deplhi-specific identifier naming conventions.

Unless there is an overwhelming benefit for doing this which outweighs the cost (like me), and your code is essentially non-visual (like me), the amount of effort involved is likely to be far too great to justify the work. I wonder if I am the only Delphi developer in the world to succesfully have migrated a significant amount of code from Delphi for use in Visual Studio. Nobody else seems to be able to provide a success story like this, which really makes you wonder how feasible this is.

Upvotes: 2

RRUZ
RRUZ

Reputation: 136431

The answer to the question Can i decode delphi.net vcl app and translate it to a c# application which can be compiled success fully using visual studio ? is No

This is the Why.

When you create a vcl net application using delphi (8), 2005, 2006 or 2007, the delphi compiler create an .NET application with a lot of dependencies to internal classes which are wrappers and helpers to call the real .net classes, these classes (wrappers) was created to facilitate the creation of .net applications to the existing delphi win32 developers.

Consider this sample.

This a delphi .net app

program DelphiNetConsole;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}    

uses
  SysUtils;    
begin
  try
    Writeln('Hello From Delphi 2007.Net');
  except
    on E:Exception do
      Writeln(E.Classname, ': ', E.Message);
  end;
end.

if you translate manually this code to C#

using System;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication8
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Hello From Delphi 2007.Net");
            }
            catch (System.Exception E)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(E.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

But using reflector you get this for the first snippet

public static void DelphiNetConsole()

{
    System.IsConsole = true;
    try
    {
        TextOutput.Output.WriteWideString("Hello From Delphi 2007.Net", 0).WriteLn();
        System.@_IOTest();
    }
    catch (Exception exception1)
    {
        Exception exception2 = System.@ExceptObject = exception1;
        Exception E = exception1;
        TextOutput.Output.WriteWideString(TObjectHelper.ClassName(System.@GetMetaFromObject(E)), 0).WriteWideString(": ", 0).WriteWideString(E.Message, 0).WriteLn();
        System.@_IOTest();
        System.@ExceptObject = null;
    }
}

As you can see the last code call a lot of helper classes and functions (like TextOutput) which are not part of the standard .net framework, rather they are part of the Borland.Delphi.System namespace.

Reflector can help you to translate some snippets of code but not the full application in an automated way.

Upvotes: 6

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