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I work on a variety of projects in several different versions of both Delphi and Visual Studio. A lot of these projects also include database access. To support all these different projects, a lot of different tools need to be installed and with each comes a set of paths that are setup for the applications to find libraries, support tools, and so forth. Since most software tools can also generate both 32-bit and 64-bit code these days, there are often two sets of paths for each type of compilation.
Recently, as I was installing my 6th version of Delphi on a new laptop, I encountered the warning that my PATH environment variable was reaching it's length limit. Sure enough, when I edited it from the System Control Panel, it also warned me that the PATH environment variable was too long--the dialog only allows values up to 2,047 characters long.
Since I had a few more versions to install, I had to make a work-around. I discovered this trick when I installed a Developer Express library a while back and saw how it shortened it's very long path to just another variable. First, it created the variable,
DXVCL=C:\Program Files (x86)\DevExpress.VCL
Then when it needed to add a PATH for it, it simply added this value: %DXVCL%\Library\Delphi15
instead of the full path.
A light-bulb came on in my head when I saw that and I thought, "if Dev Express can do it, why can't I?" I noticed Delphi was being installed in the base path, C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero and that compiled packages were being added to paths under C:\Users\David\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio. So I created a couple of environment variables:
EMB=C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero
EMB_USER=C:\Users\David\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio
Now, my path entries look like this:
When I finished, I had 3 versions of Visual Studio (2013, 2015, and 2017) and 10 different versions of Delphi installed (from Delphi 7 to Delphi 10.2 Tokyo), all one one Windows 10 machine!
Only for frequent actions
LOL! Isn't that the truth!
Yeah, it'd be nice to automate this but I'd rather have the installers (Delphi, VS, MS SQL Server Studio, etc.) do it. After all, Dev Express does, the others should take note!
Anyway, I only install a new version of Delphi every year or two now, so automating something that infrequent makes it easier to pass up.
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