Install Delphi 2010 on Windows 10 (Borland / CodeGear / Embarcadero RAD IDE)

Installing Delphi 2010 on Windows 10 Works!

Installing Embarcadero Delphi 2010 on Windows 10 surprisingly worked.

I was actually a bit surprised, when it finally came time to migrate an old, and rather dated,  Embarcadero (nee Borland, nee CodeGear) Delphi 2010 Enterprise software development virtual machine from an old Windows 7 (x64) install to a new Windows 10 (x64) install... the installation into my new Windows 10 VM was successful on the first attempt.

Although I do not use the Delphi 2010 RAD IDE very often these days, I still have some "legacy" Win32 executable compiled applications that depend on Delphi 2010. I must note that even though I have the "Enterprise" edition, I really don't use many of those supposed enterprise features — in fact, the only real reason I had ever bought the enterprise edition was for the native Microsoft SQL Server database connectivity features (i.e., not ODBC).

I cannot attest to whether every single component of Delphi 2010 will function under Windows 10 properly.  I used a rather stripped-down Delphi installation, selecting only the bits I need or use with any frequency:

• My D2010 installation included: the core stuff, plus dbGo and dbExpress database stuff;
• My D2010 install omitted: all the old BDE stuff, the visual database designer, the ribbon controls, DDE stuff, Office controls, samples, XML Mapper, Interbase, WebSnap and Help files, and probably some other junk I don't use and completely forget about (e.g., FireBase and Blackfish SQL and the like, I presume)

After installing Delphi 2010 Enterprise from its original media, I then applied the various "updates" that were published, including delphicbuilder_2010_3513Upd1_win.exe, followed by: Update4, Update5_Database_Pack, and such (these used to be available on the Embarcadero website for registered users, and I presume they still are).

Compiling Delphi projects on Windows 10 (x64)

After getting the core Delphi 2010 setup installed on my development virtual machine, of course I next had to install some of my homegrown custom Delphi VCL components and controls, and even a packaged set of controls (Raize VCL Components) — this all went smoothly, and was the first sign that things would be fine under the Win10x64 operating system.  I did full "builds" on my various custom packages code and installed those and the commercial packages just fine.

Then came the most important step: I next confirmed that all my homegrown legacy Delphi-based software applications still compiled successfully on Windows 10, and subsequently confirmed that the resulting EXE (executables) all ran properly and behaved properly on Windows 10 as well as on my older Windows 7 VM's (which, are now going away as I migrate to Windows 10) — again, I was delighted, as this all went smoothly and everything worked just fine.

I was expecting more problems and potential issues, but in the end, everything went just fine.  Maybe some of those other "Enterprise" features that I do not use would have posed a problem, but I have no idea, nor do I care now. I can compile and build the software I need to.  Also, I have a feeling that I was lucky to only be reliant upon the one commercial Delphi VCL controls pack: Raize Components (which worked just fine).  

And, as for using Windows 10 (Pro) for a development platform: fantastic!  Actually, Windows 10 has been remarkably, if not utterly stable and quite responsive.  I now use it for nearly everything, including hosting my local SQL-Server 2016 Developer Edition against which I test my web and client-server applications, and it is performing quite nicely.  I even managed to consolidate some development machines / VMs (Vmware Workstation or Player; they both work fine) — where I used to have a dedicated Microsoft Windows Server 2008r2 VM for SQL-Server, I am now just running SQL-Server Developer in the same Windows 10 Virtual Machine as my Delphi platform, along with the latest Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and a few other things... all working wonderfully together.  I must note: I had to strip a LOT of shit out of Windows 10's default installation, since, my god was there a ton of useless stuff installed by default that I would never use in a development environment (e.g., all their damn promotional software, games, apps, and varied "social platforms" related garbage. ughh!)

Bottom line: very pleased with Delphi 2010 on Windows 10!

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