Delphi 7 RLINK32 Error reading dfm file - failed read

Question

I just run into a problem that came out of nowhere... A DFM file gets read just fine from Delphi when project is built, but when I build it from command line (dcc32) I get error Error: RLINK32: Error reading file "update.dfm" Failed read

What is more stranger another project containing same file builds with no error from both Delphi and dcc.

Does anyone have a clue of what could cause something like this?

I tried to build from another location, still same.

Operating system is Windows Server 2008. Permissions seems correct.

Answer 1

Use SysInternals Process Monitor, and watch when it goes looking for update.dfm.

You'll probably see DCC32 frantically searching everywhere for update.dfm (except the place where it is). Or maybe it will find it, but OpenFile fails with an error.

Either way: you'll find out what exactly is going on.

Answer 2

To try and narrow the cause of the problem down, open the dfm with a text editor, and gradually remove properties and save until the build works. That would at least indicate if it's a problem with a particular component in the dfm.

Answer 3

The main thing that is different with a dcc32 is the library path in the environment options. When you build from the IDE this is used. When you run dcc32 you need to specify this.

You can do this by setting the library path for the -I and -U options on dcc32, or you can use a dcc32.cfg file to hold all your configuration for the build.

RLINK32 can signify duplicate resource so consider renaming one of the forms so as to avoid the clash. Having said that hopefully the library path should resolve the issue.

Answer 4

I've seen this happen when you remove a value from an enum type and that value was being used in the dfm. The next time you opened the dfm the IDE would put garbage text in where the value was. Delphi 2010 if that helps.

I would just open the dfm in a text editor and remove the corrupt text.

Answer 5

I found this after having the same problem which seemed to happen randomly from time to time if I changed a bit of code of added a copied a component, this time the only difference I made was changing an = to <> but changing it back worked fine except now I've changed something else it's happening again - hence the reason how I found this. Being quite a newb I didn't really understand some of the other bits mentioned here but I just found by building the project first before pressing F9 seemed to work.. just for now at least.

Hope this helps someone! :)