[gentoo-dev] Thinking ahead: thoughts on pascal stuff (reloaded and virtual/pascal)

[gentoo-dev] Thinking ahead: thoughts on pascal stuff (reloaded and virtual/pascal)

[Chris White]

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All,

After working on fpc some more, I came across a nice little piece of
information. FPC comes with a nice configuration file that stores
itself in etc and does basically what make.conf does for C[XX]FLAGS.
Having said this, #4:

4) A possible new keyword added to make.conf called
PFLAGS/PASCAL_FLAGS/PASFLAGS/WHATEVER_BEGINS_WITH_P_AND_CAN_BE_UPPERCASED

As far as George's response:

| I'd put #1 and really defining: just how many packages are talking
| about here? For what I know about there wouldn't be that much.

This is one of the things I'm taking into consideration right now
while thinking about dev-pascal.  As you state later on, if I only
find 1 or 2 pascal based packages, then I probably won't even bother.

| BTW, there is gpc as well ;) , which is gcc based and is striving
| to
be as much standards compliant
| as possible (Standard Pascal, Extended pascal and few more recent
additions).

The actual reason in my choosing fpc over gpc is that it has a lot
more as far as extensions ( gtk, opengl, mysql, etc. ), and also
contains a lot of the Borland Delphi class units.  This, if done
correctly, could mean the porting of many open-source delphi programs
to linux.  Granted this won't be a "Compile and it automagically
works", you'd probably have to adjust some windows only stuff (windows
api->gtk), but in the end it would be possible.

| Overall for the packages I am aware of (that'd be gpc and fpc in
| the
tree right now, possibly grx and one or two other >libs to be added
later) I am not so sure there is a need for a separate category or a
herd. Right now it should go under >lang-misc (herd), which I created
specifically for variety of lang-related but scattered in belonging
packages. However if >you can think of 5-7+ packages to populate new
category (bear in mind, according to present agreement gpc and fpc
| should stay under dev-lang, Pascal related packages which are not
compilers (libs or other stuff) would then go under >dev-pascal) and
are willing to take on active maintainership of the category and head
the herd, I say go right ahead ;) .

Once again, I am also taking into consideration the need for a large
number of pascal oriented packages before I go off doing this.  As far
as herd an maintainership, I'm still waiting for more herd members
before I run off and do that.  I'd rather be prepared with a good
number of devs in the pascal herd, then jump in solo and watch the
fireworks fly as I try and handle other stuff.

As far as Spider's response:

| heh, this would be good. :)

| Personally, I have fairly strong feelings for Pascal, topped with a
|
|
lot of previous experience with the language, some >minor experience
with the fpc toolchain, but, sadly, not much time that I can spend on
it.  But, i'll be peeking curiously >and poking stuff to see if it
beeps ;)

Feel free to poke around with fpc-source.  It's a new cvs snapshot
source build I created that will be package.masked (It still has a few
here and dep related issues that I'd like to solve before even
considering it ~arch).  Of course, the binary fpc build is always
avaliable for those that would rather not mess around with the source
stuff.

On another note:

~    Since there is fpc, fpc-source, and gpc, I'd like to also propose
a virtual/pascal for users that want a choice as to which pascal
compiler they're using.  The users would have the choice of:

1) Development fpc-source compiler for doing bleeding edge work
2) Somewhat more stable fpc compiler
3) the gpc compiler for gcc-based pascal compiling and standarization

Please feel free to comment on whether or not that should be
implemented.

That's all for now, thanks ahead of time for suggestions and what not.

- --
Chris White <chriswhite@gentoo.org>
- ------------------------
Sound | Video | Security
ChrisWhite @ irc.freenode.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Thinking ahead: thoughts on pascal stuff (reloaded and virtual/pascal)

[Peter Ruskin]

On Saturday 21 August 2004 15:47, Chris White wrote:
> After working on fpc some more, I came across a nice little piece of
> information. FPC comes with a nice configuration file that stores
> itself in etc and does basically what make.conf does for C[XX]FLAGS.

Then of course there's lazarus (not yet in portage AFAIK):

License: GPL/LGPL

Lazarus are the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi. 
Free Pascal is a (L)GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 
68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and 
compile Delphi syntax, which is of course OOP.

Lazarus is the missing part of the puzzle that will allow you to develop 
Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. The IDE will 
eventually become a RAD tool like Delphi.

As Lazarus is growing we need more developers.

-- 
Peter
========================================================================
Gentoo Linux: Portage 2.0.50-r9. kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r13.
i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+.  gcc(GCC): 3.3.3.
KDE: 3.3.0.    Qt: 3.3.3.
========================================================================

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Thinking ahead: thoughts on pascal stuff (reloaded and virtual/pascal)

[George Shapovalov]

Sorry, did not get back to this earlier.

On Saturday 21 August 2004 07:47, Chris White wrote:
> | BTW, there is gpc as well ;) , which is gcc based and is striving
> | to be as much standards compliantas possible (Standard Pascal, Extended 
>pascal and few more recent additions).
>
> The actual reason in my choosing fpc over gpc is that it has a lot
> more as far as extensions ( gtk, opengl, mysql, etc. ), and also
> contains a lot of the Borland Delphi class units.  This, if done
Well, my first reaction was "shouldn't we just have both and let the user 
decide?", but then I was your proposal of virtuals. So I take it this is not 
really an "either or" what you mean here :).


> Once again, I am also taking into consideration the need for a large
> number of pascal oriented packages before I go off doing this.  As far
> as herd an maintainership, I'm still waiting for more herd members
> before I run off and do that.  I'd rather be prepared with a good
> number of devs in the pascal herd, then jump in solo and watch the
> fireworks fly as I try and handle other stuff.
Well, this is a nice language, but it has a small community and not that many 
packages, just like many other "alternative" languages which we have at lease 
a few already. I don't think large herd is really necessary here. For such 
languages we usually have a simple formula: 1 active dev, one fallback dev 
(who oftentimes is a former trainer of an active dev :)) which seems to work 
fine for the most of these. One possible exception is Ada, - no its not dead, 
on the contrary its pretty active :). But even there I think its reasonable, 
as this is a comparatively low profile language - meaning not that many 
users. So, in short, I think standard 1 active/1 fallback dev should work 
reasonable for Pascal as well.


> On another note:
>
> ~    Since there is fpc, fpc-source, and gpc, I'd like to also propose
> a virtual/pascal for users that want a choice as to which pascal
> compiler they're using.  The users would have the choice of:
Hm, I am not sure this really provides much benefit in this case. 

1. We are talking about a collection of compilers here, i.e. not services or 
libs. Users will have to actively pick and use what they want anyway. There 
does not seem to be a need for "transparent selection" support here.

2. Still, if there were some packages that could be compiled by either one or 
another, than that would be sensible. However gpc and fpc are not really that 
compatible. In fact they both support a small common core (Standard Pascal), 
but then they provide support for a different extended dialects. Although gpc 
seems to be providing some of the Turbo Pascal features (no Delphi and some 
but IIRC not quite all Borland Pascal extensions). Still, considering that 
the packages that were mentioned were mostly dialect specific, I don't think 
a virtual makes that much sense here, as most of dependant packages will have 
to depend on a particular compiler anyway.

George


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