Delphi SDK for KolibriOS

This package contains Delphi SDK with all programs and scripts needed to complile Delphi programs for KolibriOS. Many examples are also included, GUI and console. You can compile programs either from Delphi IDE and command-line compiler dcc32.exe.

Versions of Delphi

Theoretically, any version of Delphi for Windows can be used, since Delphi 4. In practice, only Delphi 6, 7 and 2007 were tested. You can try any other version yourself, modern or ancient.

Getting started

Unpack downloaded archive to a directory you want. You will open .dpr files and run .bat scripts from this directory.

Compiling examples

To compile all SDK examples, just run build-examples.bat. This script uses command-line Delphi compiler. That means the compiler should be available by a path from the PATH environment variable. If you installed Delphi using standard installation program from Borland/Embarcadero, no else steps needed.

KolibriOS executables will appear in Bin directory with additional files needed for some GUI examples.

Hello, world!

Simple “Hello, world!” program looks like:

program Hello;

uses
  CRT;

begin
  InitConsole('Hello');
  WriteLn('Hello, world!');
end.

Compiling from Delphi IDE

First, you need to build RTL for you version of Delphi. Please run build-RTL.bat script to do it. Compiled DCUs will appear in RTL directory.

Open program in the IDE, press Ctrl+F9. Compiled .exe file will appear in Bin directory. Use convert.bat to convert it to KolibriOS executable:

convert hello.exe

To automate this process, you can add Build item to Delphi Tools menu:

For your projects, please ensure if you have correct build.bat script.

Compiling from command line

To compile an example, use build.bat script included to its directory. If RTL not built yet, it will build automatically. Build script automates all compling and converting operations, so Bin directory will contain KolibriOS executable immediately after the run.

Running programs in KolibriOS

There are many ways to prepare your programs to run under KolibriOS using either on real PC or virtual machine. On real PC, just copy programs to the flash drive you use to boot KolibriOS. For virtual machines, use ISO image to boot KolibriOS and diskette image for your programs.

To write KolibriOS executables into a diskette image, you can use any program which supports diskette images, like WinImage or UltraISO. Those programs are not free. We recommend you to use ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver by Olof Lagerkvist, which is open source and free. Create an image, format it, mount, then copy your programs to the virtual diskette. Now you ready to mount this image into virtual machine and run programs under KolibriOS. Don't forget to dismount the diskette before use it in KolibriOS.

Please download latest nightly build of KolibriOS to run programs. If you prefer full-featured distributives, use KolibriN instead.

We have also prepared a pre-built diskette with all compiled programs, named delphi.img. There is about 1.33 MB of free space, so you can use it to copy your programs too.

Writing own programs

We have written templates for your programs, My\Console\Program1.dpr and My\GUI\Program2.dpr. Open one of them them in Delphi IDE, then save into the directory you want under the name of your program. That's all to start coding. Use Bin\convert.bat script to convert your program to KolibriOS format as written above.

If you want to complile your program from command line, copy build.bat script to your directory, then edit it and change ProgramX to the name of your program. Compiled .exe will be put to Bin directory.

Code pages

Default KolibriOS code page is CP866 (Russian OEM). If you want to use string constants in the language other than English, you should save your sources in that CP866. Unfortunately, Delphi IDE does not support CP866 natively. The future versions of SDK will support other encodings for sources, including Windows-1251 and UTF-8, with automated conversion for KolibriOS.

Programs and scripts included to SDK

Programs
- exe2kos.exe – Windows executable to KolibriOS executable conversion utility.
- kpack.exe – KolibriOS executables packer.
- kunpack.exe – KolibriOS executables unpacker.
- Pet.exe – universal Windows executables rebuilder, you can use it outside of this SDK.
Shell scripts
- build-all.bat – builds RTL and all programs, including your programs.
- build-examples.bat – builds example programs.
- build-my.bat – builds your programs have put to the subdirectories of My directory.
- build-RTL.bat – builds Delphi RTL for KolibriOS.
- Bin\convert.bat – helper script to convert manually compiled programs to KolibriOS format.
- Lib\build.bat – library build script calling by other ones when builings programs.
- Lib\convert.bat – library conversion script calling by other ones when builings or converting programs compiled manually.

Tips and Tricks

Release archive contains .dof files with correct Delphi IDE settings, especially paths. If you want to use latest hot version of SDK from the master branch on GitHub, download the latest release archive before, unpack it. Then unpack the archive of hot version to same directory with file overwriting. It gives you correctly prepared environment to compile hot versions of programs.

If particular program not yet exist in SDK release, copy existing .dof file from the directory of other program was included to the release, for example GUI\ColorButtons.dof.

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