REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1

icon1Posted by paul on Jul 23, 2008 in Uncategorized | 3 comments

In case you hadn’t heard, REAL Software shipped their first “point release” for REALbasic since the advent of the Rapid Release Model 3 years ago: REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1.

Aaron points outs details for why they did this in his blog. I think it’s great to see REAL making sure that this release of REALbasic is stable enough to use.

I am now using Release 3.1 on three of my relatively large current projects and had very little difficulty upgrading any of them. I expect all my projects will be moved to it within the month.

Previously I was using a combination of REALbasic 2007 Release 5 and REALbasic 2008 Release 2 for my projects.

One reason I’m so keen on Release 3 is simple: the profiler. I’ve already made good use of it to pinpoint some slow code. There are also plenty of bugs fixes. I’ve not run into most, but I like these:

852: Windows tuck themselves up under the menu bar
I seemed to run into this often enough to be annoyed, even if it was easy to work around.

1800: Some older projects do not have their InitialParent setup
This prevented me from upgrading some older projects to REALbasic 2008 r1 or r2.

2507: IDE leaves behind Temp files after saving
Minor, but annoying to see these files mixed with my source.

2728: RB2008r1 Extract method makes code editor behave strange and buggy
I use “Extract Method” a lot and this was very annoying.

2789: Enabled property for toolbar item doesn’t save in RBVCP format
I reported this one (during the r3 beta) and am glad to see it fixed.

The warning system is also nice, but I’m not so happy with it taking over my favorite Command-K shortcut to check for compile errors. Previously Command-K would just do a “Syntax Check” and was fast because it made use of incremental compilation. Now it does an “Analyze Project” and always recompiles the project from scratch so it can find all warnings. I don’t like the change, but I’m getting used to just checking the item I’m working on (Shift-Command-K) instead.

I still eagerly await some of the cool database stuff they showed at REAL World, such as the built-in ORM and ability to specify different databases for debug and test. REALbasic is also still a bit of a memory hog, but I don’t notice that much with 4GB of RAM.

Anyway, you should definitely check out REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1 if you haven’t already!

3 Responses to “REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1”

  1. tiriqs says:
    August 5, 2008 at 1:52 am

    why there r now libs when i compile for windows?

    i hoped to get away from dll-hell :/

    is there a good reason for that?

  2. Paul Lefebvre says:
    August 5, 2008 at 8:18 am

    The Libs folder (containing DLLs of plugins) was added in REALbasic 2008 Release 2. The reasons are best explained by REAL Software engineer Aaron Ballman:

    http://ramblings.aaronballman.com/2008/05/important_win32_application_pa.html

    In short: stability

    I don’t think this brings you anywhere near DLL hell. After all, all the DLLs for your app remain in your app’s folder and do not clutter up the system.

  3. tiriqs says:
    August 7, 2008 at 1:32 am

    ok..thanks 4 answer

    i worked until yesterday with 2008r1, so i didn’t recognize that. i was very surprised when i saw that n i had to patch my installroutines, but ok.

    the bad thing is, that i have now 2 lib folders in my applicationfolder, cuz of my updaterapp

    anyway, thanks 4 explaining me