Delphi Converter

The converter has improved during past few months. The main focus has been in Delphi project conversion. Delphi package conversion should get most of the same improvements automatically but it is not tested much.

I think Delphi converter is a very important piece of Lazarus because new people coming from Delphi often want to try it. They get their first impression of Lazarus from it.
When I started to learn Lazarus last year, it was one of the first things to test. Then it failed to convert most projects. Its quality was not equal to the rest of Lazarus.

On February 2010 I got write access to SVN trunk converter directory. I made the converter code more object oriented. Using object member variables instead of function parameters made it easier to extend the code later. I refactored the code heavily, actually more than really necessary, partly to organize it better and partly to learn what it does.

The initial dialog shows there are three possible targets for the conversion:
* "Lazarus/LCL" -- One way conversion.
* "Lazarus/LCL for Windows only" -- Does not remove or convert windows specific unit names.
* "Both Lazarus/LCL and Delphi" -- Tries to maintain the code compatible with both Delphi and Lazarus using conditional compilation.

Source file conversion

Initially the main goal was to reduce messageboxes and other notifications. Converting a big Delphi project was not realistic because there were so many messages. Now useless questions are removed and notifications go to IDE messagewindow.



Earlier it was possible to comment out not-found unit names in USES section. Now that is extended. The user can either comment them out or search for a unit path during conversion. If the units are found, their path is added to project settings. If user chooses to comment them out, the same units are then commented automatically in following source files.

Used unit names can also be replaced by other unit names. Regular expression syntax for replacement is supported.

Form file conversion

The other big part of conversion is the DFM form file conversion. Some properties of Delphi components do not exist in the equivalent LCL components. They can be deleted, either automatically or interactively.
A bigger problem are Delphi components which don't exist in LCL at all. It is important to replace them with a "fall-back" LCL component, especially if they are containers and have more components inside them.
Now the components can be replaced and regular expression syntax is supported, just like for unit name replacement.

Issues

The converter is not ready yet. These are some issues and problems I must solve.

Replacement names for both units and components are hard-coded. Soon they will be stored in a XML configuration file and the user can edit them.

A complex codetools function CheckLFM is used for scanning the form file. It stops working when there are errors in source. There are often errors in a unit under conversion so this is a problem.
I must study and fix the codetools functions or even replace them with something.

Replacing a component with a "fall-back" LCL component leads to more unknown properties. It must be solved somehow.

Juha