How to allow Delphi XE2 to view a shared folder on my Mac from a Windows 7 virtual virtual machine

Question

I am using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 under VirtualBox (latest version, 4.1.4) on my MacBook Air. I created a shared folder on Mac under my user folder. I have granted read / write permissions to this folder for my account. (I also set it up with read / write access for everyone, and that didn't change the situation.)

In Windows 7 under VirtualBox, I added this folder as a shared folder.

In my Windows 7 virtual machine, I can see this folder, create new folders and files in it, and read folders and files using Windows Explorer.

Problem with Delphi XE2. If I try to open or save a project in this shared folder, in the "Save" dialog box, the shared resource (which I have now mapped to a network drive) appears with a red X, indicating that something is wrong with it. If I click on this folder, Delphi will display a dialog box titled "Restore Network Connection" and the message "An error occurred while reconnecting the public folders E: to \ VBOXSVR \ Demos VirtualBox: the request is not supported. Has been restored."

The fact that I cannot save projects in this shared folder impedes my ability to easily create iOS applications and generate the necessary Xcode folders using the Delphi utility dpr2xcode.exe. Instead, I have to create a local project folder, run dpr2code.exe to create an Xcode project, and then use Windows Explorer to copy the contents of the local folder to the shared folder, where I can load the generated project into Xcode, compile and run it.

Does anyone know of any configuration or steps that I can take to allow Delphi to see the shared folder as a valid folder?

For the record, I saw a similar problem with other versions of Delphi in relation to folders from the Delphi installation in VMWare Workstation (8.0) running Windows 7. In such cases, Delphi just does not display the shared folder.

Answer 1

Switch your virtual machine to a Bridged network, not to NAT.

In VBox, select your virtual machine, select "Settings"> "Network"> "Adapter 1"> "Apply to" on the "Bridge adapter"

I assume that you have already enabled SAMBA sharing on the OSX host (System Preferences> Sharing> File Sharing). Options> Share Files And Folders Using SMB (Windows))

The reason you want the bridged network to be connected is because your virtual machine is assigned its own IP address rather than sharing the IP address of your OSX host (which NAT does).

Take a picture, let me know if this helps :)