Delphi 7: Any differences between compiling under Win XP or Windows Server 2003?

Question

I have a legacy application to maintain. Currently, releases are built from one particular developper workstation, that is a bad, bad habit.

I asked for a virtualized build server to automate the build from one centralized environment. The only problem is that the server they gave me run with windows server 2003, and they will not give me a windows XP to do that...

Should I be careful on specific issues, what should I be aware of?

Thanks

Answer 1

Normally the OS an application is built on with Delphi does not matter, so there should be no problems. The only exception would be with any imported type libraries, because a newer OS could come with a more recent version. This can be worked around by not using the imported unit directly, but by copying a known good version to your project, renaming it and adding it to version control.

Answer 2

The compiler itself won't care, and will produce the same code regardless.

Answer 3

Depending on your version of Delphi, the license specifically allows you to "install" the command-line compiler on a separate build PC for the purposes of these types of builds. It shouldn't matter what the OS is.

You don't actually need to use the Delphi installer to set such a build PC up. My build PC simply has the following folders directly copied on to it (you may need/want to add the bin path to your PATH environment variable).

Program Files\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0\bin
Program Files\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0\lib
Program Files\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0\source
Program Files\Common Files\RAD Studio\Shared Assemblies\5.0

Answer 4

I was using a Win2003 build machine and Delphi 7 for quite a while whithout ever encountering problems. Also developing and debugging worked fine. I even used the terminal server to access the console sometimes, also no problem there.