Adding an Unit or New Form in Delphi causes Access Violation

Question

When I add a file or form to a Delphi project, often I get an access violation. Then I have to restart Delphi, open the project and try it again. Then it sometimes workes, sometimes I get the same Access violation. I am having this issue in all Delphi versions since XE8.

Other Delphi programmers seems to have the same problems, as here on the Community of Embarcadero: https://community.embarcadero.com/forum/programming/9387-creating-a-new-unit-or-new-form-in-delphi-10-2-3-causes-access-violation

Some people say that it's caused by third part libraries. I doubt that. When you look at the stacktrace, there is no third party library.

To reproduce:

• Work in a (somewhat) larger project and make some code changes before adding a unit.
• Add a new unit/form: File>New>Unit - or add an existing file using drag and drop or 'Add file to project' - Or delete a file from a project.

Answer 1

I contacted Embarcadero about this. They know about this issue and they replied as following:

It's due to some Castalia code, that's merged in Delphi since XE8. It's only possible to reduce this issue, so it will happen less often. Use: Tools - Options - Editor Options - Color - Structural Highlighting and switch everything off.

Looking at how the code is integrated into the IDE, this results in less editor parsing and repainting. Irrespective of that, the handler that causes the Access violation is still attached to the editor.

So basically, we will have to wait for this to be fixed in 10.3.

But a while later, I discovered, that the Access violation only occurs if you have closed the project's 'dpr file'. So as a work-around:

Don't close the dpr-file and you won't get the Access violation.