[fpc-devel] arm-wince errors

[Michael Schnell]

>
> I am not sure if we understand each other completely, so let me write 
> my (personal) view on these things.
:-)  see below...
>
> FPC is a great compiler, which also can target several OS-es on the 
> arm processor (linux, wince, gba and lately nintendo ds). 
Sounds great !
> I want Lazarus to be the best developement evironment for FPC (and 
> still a lot has to be done). 
As I and my colleagues need to do productive professional work for our 
employer, I do this research to find out if it's possible / viable to 
use FPC (with or without Lazarus - unfortunately the possible 
alternative "cross-FPC" project, that integrates FPC into the Delphi 
IDE, seems to be stalled at the moment) to port our large embedded 
Delphi-application to PC-Linux and (partly) to ARM-Linux.

> The FPC compiler can cross compiler to these arm target, native 
> compilation on the arm is technically  possible, but not very well 
> tested, because of the memory requirements needed and a PDA doesn't 
> have a nice screen for editing ;-).
Not necessary for me (and supposedly not really necessary at all).
>
> You can use Lazarus to cross compile the application you have written 
> in the Lazarus editor.
Great ! Supposedly a good way would be to edit and (as much as possible) 
test with Lazarus on PC before cross-compiling.
>
> For everything written about, nothing is said about the type of 
> applications, whether GUI with the LCL, GUI without the LCL or console 
> or no visible display at all. Lazarus is source editor (with 
> highlighing, codetools and help) and fpc is the compiler.
For me (speaking to my colleagues, that are used to do Delphi) "Lazarus" 
is the IDE (including the editor, FPC and the debugger) and the LCL 
:-)   . (Similar as Delphi does include the VCL, as it comes with it and 
that is what you pay for :-) :-) ).
>
> Now for at least arm-wince it is possible create LCL applications. For 
> more details about that look at 
> http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Windows_CE_Interface.
Great !
>
> I don't know the status of gtk1 on linux PDA, but if it works, then it 
> may be possible to use LCL applications on linux PDA's too.
I don't know either, but Trolltech offers a "portable" version of the 
QT-library (not for free :-( ) and there are lots of GUI-Applications 
for Linux PDAs (and even cellphones) done in C (see 
http://www.linuxdevices.com) . Thus a set of usable widgets should be 
available somehow.
>
> Since I am primarily a windows user, I don't know what you mean by 
> 'remote X feature' exactly. 
In Linux (and other Unixes), the widgets (and other graphical 
primitives) use a well defined data stream to an "X-Server" as an 
interface to the graphic hardware, mouse and keyboard. A Linux Desktop 
installation (or a PDA) uses a local X-Server but this is just a special 
case. With standard Linux you can easily use an X-Server via TCP/IP. The 
Linux PC I use as a file server, does not have a monitor at all and sits 
somewhere in a dark corner. I (in the moment mostly) use a Windows PC to 
work on. If I want to access the Linux box, I start "Xming", which is a 
free X-server that runs on a Windows PC. I just start it and I get a 
standard graphical Linux (Gnome) login screen just as I would sit at a 
monitor directly connected to the Linux box. (Linux of course can deal 
with many remote X sessions at the same time.) This should be possible 
with a "headless" ARM Linux box, too, saving a lot of memory, as the 
(quite huge) X-server and graphic hardware driver does not need to run 
on the device itself. Of course this way no graphic hardware, mouse and 
keyboard is necessary in the Linux box.
> I am confident that the fpc compiler can be adapted for embedded 
> arm-linux, Lazarus can be used to interface with the compiler to 
> compile application for it.
For a start that would be sufficient for my use, but on the long run 
using remote X could be advantageous for configuring the embedded device.

Thanks for all informations provided....
-Michael