CodeHealer 2.6

If you happen to be a Delphi programmer, SOCK Software’s CodeHealer may help you to find and fix a number of potential problems that would otherwise be extremely difficult to track down. I reviewed CodeHealer 2.1 a few years ago. The latest version, 2.6, is an updated version whose core functionality and user interface is broadly similar to that earlier version so, if you are unfamiliar with this product, you may want to take a look at my previous review.

In brief, CodeHealer is a stand-alone code analysis tool which examines entire Delphi projects and produces detailed reports to locate errors such as undefined function return values or identifiers that hide others with the same name.

To use it you just open an existing Delphi project and tell CodeHealer which version of Delphi you wish to test against. You then click a button to calculate the project ‘metrics’. This displays statistics such as the number of code lines and comments, constructors and classes in each file.

You can click another button to analyse the project. This produces a report on potential errors or inefficiencies and gives you the choice of ‘healing’ some of them - for example, by commenting out or deleting an unused variable declaration. There is also an option to load the Delphi editor at the position of the problem code so that you may edit it manually.

A variety of minor fixes and improvements have been made in this latest version of CodeHealer (these are listed on the SOCK Software web site) though the ‘unreachable code’ option which I noted as an omission in CodeHealer 2.1 has still not been implemented. SOCK Software assures me that this will be added in a future update.

The most obvious change of all is CodeHealer’s updated support for the latest versions of Delphi (Delphi 2009 and 2010 for Win32). This means that CodeHealer can now be used with all Win32 versions of Delphi from Delphi 5 onwards and also with Delphi For .NET from versions 8 to 2007. It does not work with Embarcadero’s current .NET product, Delphi Prism, however.

For professional programmers any help at finding and fixing bugs or redundant code is worth its weight in gold. Over the years, I have programmed a great deal in Delphi and, if I were still doing so now, I would certainly use CodeHealer. In fact, these days, most of my development is done in a mix of C# and ActionScript and I must say I only wish I had a version of CodeHealer that worked in those languages (in fact, the CodeHealer web site tantalisingly mentions a future version for C#, C, C++ and Java but when I asked about these SOCK Software would not commit to a date).

There is a 30 day Trial Edition available so if you are unsure whether it’s the tool you need, just give it a test drive.