Ok so I was playing around with this some more and removed the requires RTL from the bpl package in the test application to force it to include the rtl stuff and it started to profile correctly.
this implied that in order to get the allocation profiler to work and profile memory correctly we need a debug version of the borland rtl70.bpl file.
So I created one and replaced the rtl70.bpl in the system32 | SysWOW64 folder and re compiled the test app and it allocation profiler started working.
OK so now here's where it gets weird. although I could debug the test application fine (its very simple) when I rebult and tried to run the large legacy application I started getting exceptions
for third party libraries (zlib compression in this case) not finding references in rtl70.bpl
so I went back to system32 folder and renamed the debug bpl and put back the original borland rtl70.bpl and tried to run again and hey presto the allocaiton profiler was still working.
I suspected it may have something to do with the project being build with the debug version in place in the windows system folder so I rebuilt again with the original borland bpl back in place and sure enough the allocation profiler still seems to be working. Why this is so I'm at a loss to explain yet but it seems creating the debug version seemed to blow the cobwebs out from under something somewhere in my aqtime\delphi setup so to speak.
For what its worth here's the steps to create the debug version of rtl70.bpl
NB) as mentioned above I am not actually using this in the system32 | SysWOW64 folder and back to the original rtl70.bpl. yeah its weird lol
- create a new delphi package project
- compile and you should get a message dialog to add rtl package to the requires section if its not already there
- go to project manager and expand the package requires section
- right click on rtl package and select open this should open the rtl package project.
- Create a new project folder where desired to save this debug version
- now save the rtl project as rtl70.dpk in your folder created above. (you can ignore the initial package project its only use is a means of opening the rtl package)
- now open project options for newly saved rtl70 package
- on description tab add a suffix to the description eg: Borland Run Time Library 70 (Debug)
- on linker and compiler tabs: set the debug flags for your delphi version as per AQtime documentation, I also included debug dcu option.
https://support.smartbear.com/aqtime/docs/profiling-with/prepare-apps/compiler-settings-native/index.html
- Save Project again
- navigate to windows\system32 or windows\sysWow64 (depending on os version)
- backup/rename rtl70.bpl to rtl70_Borland.bpl (or something similar) do the same for rtl70.map or rtl70.dcp if present
- open a command prompt and navigate to your folder containing the debug rtl70.dpk
run the command: dcc32.exe rtl70.dpk to compile the bpl.**
- copy your newly compiled rtl70.bpl to the System32 | SysWow64 folder
- fireup AQ Time and Allocation profiler should now work
**) when building rtl70 I got missing .dcu references to two files namely VarHlpr.dcu and StrHlpr.dcu.
I couldn't find either a .pas or .dcu version of these anywhere in my install nor any references in delphi installed .pas files so commented them out of the package for now.
(this may come back to bite me later, so I will endevor to find a copy of these .pas files)
Anyway as mentioned at the moment I'm stumped at why swicthing back to original rtl70.bpl now works and in lieu of a better response and as this seems to be working for me so far for the moment I thought I'd post it here incase it helps anyone in a similar situation out of a hole.
I'll post updates if anything else comes to light.
