With Delphi XE2 now available for everyone to enjoy, I figured it’s time I start providing some useful information to help you make the most of it!

One of the primary new features of XE2 is the ability to produce MacOSX applications, and to do that, there are additional steps you must take in order to prepare both your Windows development system, and your MacOSX deployment/testing system for this task.

This document makes the following assumptions:

1. You’ve installed Delphi (or RAD Studio) XE2 on a Windows 64bit system
2. You’ve installed Delphi (or RAD Studio) XE2 to the default paths

So you’ve just installed Delphi (or RAD Studio) XE2… congratulations and welcome to the new and exciting world of cross-platform Delphi development!

Still, you’re not quite ready to start deploying your applications to your MacOSX machine just yet! Fear not, however, as the remaining steps should take you just a few additional minutes and you’ll be good to go!

On your Windows 64bit deployment/testing machine

• Open Windows Explorer (Flag+E)
• Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\9.0\PAServer on your Development system.
  
• Copy setup_paserver.zip over to your MacOSX device. You can do this any way you like: Share a folder on your PC and copy it from the Mac, place the file on a Mac-compatible USB flash drive and copy it that way…. whatever works best for you!

NOTE: The remaining steps in this section are only necessary if you’re running Delphi (or RAD Studio) XE2 on a 32bit system, and wish to deploy/debug 64bit Windows applications. If you’re developing on 64bit Windows, skip to the MacOSX section!

• Copy setup_paserver.exe to your 64bit Windows deployment/testing machine (again, via network or whatever method works best for you)
• Run setup_paserver.exe on your 64bit Windows deployment/testing machine (IMPORTANT NOTE: Should either the setup_paserver.zip or setup_paserver.exe files be missing, you should contact Embarcadero support as something has gone wrong with your XE2 installation!)

• Press OK

• Press Next

• Select “I accept the terms of the License Agreement” and press Next

• Press Next

• Press Install

•  Wait for the process to finish (could be anything from a minute or longer)

• Press Done

On your MacOSX deployment/debugging machine

• In Finder, locate the Folder into which you placed setup_paserver.zip, and Double-Click on the zip file.

• Double-Click on the file named setup_paserver (noting the absence of .zip) to begin the PAServer setup on your MacOSX system.

• Press OK

• Press Next

• Select “I accept the terms of the License Agreement” and press Next

• Press Next (Note: This guide presumes that you’re installing PAServer on your MacOSX machine using the default location. If you elect to install to a different location, you will need to accommodate for that in future portions of this guide!)

• Press Install (Remember: the installation process can take anything from a few seconds to several minutes)

• Press Done
• Go back to Finder, and navigate to “/Users/%username%/Applications/Embarcadero/PAServer” (substitute %username% for your MacOSX account username)

• To run PAServer on your Mac (which is necessary to deploy and debug Delphi applications for the OSX platform), you can simply Double-Click on the paserver Application file

• Simply enter a good password and press the Enter/Return Key

You can also create a Desktop/Dock shortcut to the paserver application to make it easier to run on demand…. or, if you’re clever…..

Make PAServer start automatically on your Mac when you switch it on (or log in)

• Since you already have Finder open in the “/Users/%username%/Applications/Embarcadero/PAServer” folder…
• Bring up Context Menu (by doing Control+Click) on the paserver.command file
• Go to Open With and click TextEdit

•  Modify the second line so that it resembles the following:
  “/Users/%username%/Applications/Embarcadero/PAServer/paserver” -password=S0m3Gr8tP455w0rd
  Including quotes, and remembering to substitute %username% with your MacOSX user account name! Essentially you’re just adding -password=… to the end of the line!

• Save the file (using Command+S) and then Quit TextExit
• Open System Preferences, select Users & Groups, then press the Login Items button.
• Press the + button to add a new item to your login group
• Locate “/Users/%username%/Applications/Embarcadero/PAServer/paserver.command” and press Add.
• Tick the box (in the Hide column) corresponding to your paserver.command entry

PAServer will now automatically start (and hide itself) whenever you log in to your Mac, eliminating the annoyance of forgetting to start it before attempting to deploy/debug a Delphi application to the OSX platform.

Deploying your first FireMonkey application to your MacOSX machine

• Open or create your FireMonkey project
• On the Project Manager, you will need to Right-Click on Target Platforms, click Add Platform, and select OS X from the list, followed by clicking OK
• Right-click on the OS X entry under Target Platforms on the Project Manager and click Assign Remote Profile
• Click Add…
• Enter Profile name

• Click Next >>
• Enter the Host name (or IP Address) of your MacOSX machine, and your Password as specified for PAServer on your Mac.

• You may use Test Connection to ensure that your details are correct
• Click Next >>, followed by Finish
• Select your new Remote Profile from the list (e.g. My Mac Device as per the screenshot for Step 1) and click OK

That’s it! Your profile will be used for all MacOSX deployments by default (unless you specify a different profile for specific projects). Pressing F9 will deploy your application to your MacOSX machine (presuming you have selected the OS X entry in Target Platforms on the Project Manager), and you’ll be able to debug your application from Delphi whilst it is running on your Mac!

Just because pictures speak louder than words…

You can find the official PAServer documentation on Embarcadero’s Documentation Wiki.