<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2523" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"
bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document
face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 1/2/2005 12:31:43 P.M. Central Standard Time, <A
href="mailto:Michael.VanCanneyt@Wisa.be">Michael.VanCanneyt@Wisa.be</A>
writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-LEFT: 10px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>The Free
Pascal Team is pleased to announce that FPC version 1.9.6<BR>(or 2.0.0-RC1) is
available and ready for download.<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Thanks, Michael.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Downloaded it this morning and it seems to be working nicely. Do have a
couple issues a couple questions and a monster KUDO. Will do the issues
first:</DIV>
<DIV>1) The Win32 installer does not install the utils folder. It's in the
download, but doesn't get installed. Easily corrected by just unzipping it
manually.</DIV>
<DIV>2) There is no demo folder, and hence, can't do the simple check with
hello.pp that is referenced in the README</DIV>
<DIV>3) The source directories on the download sites are still empty. Are they
still coming or am I looking in the wrong place, </DIV>
<DIV>which leads to my first question:</DIV>
<DIV>1) I have been keeping up-to-date at the source level with CVS updates
every couple days. Can I just keep building on my current source tree with CVS
updates or do I need to do a complete new CVS checkout (please say yes, my
network connection stinks!!)</DIV>
<DIV>2) It's really nice to have debugger (gdb) support in the IDE again. I
get it every time I load a new binary and lose it again every time I install a
snapshot compiling the sources. What the heck do I have to do to keep
getting the IDE and GDB connected under Windows. I've downloaded every
concievable flavor of GDB I can find (the GNU .gz version, Cygwin, MingW) I'm
sure I've got every thing I need to keep it working but I'll be darned if I can
figure out what I need to do/configure to make it all work together. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And now the praise and adulation:</DIV>
<DIV>Michael et al, your work on the documentation is nothing short of
herculean. While not directly related to this release, the Doc-HTML library
is great and provides a great context-sensitive help under Lazarus. The new
RTL.PDF file that came with this release is OUTSTANDING. For a non-Delphi (and
basically non-OOP) oldtimer like me, I think this will become my "Newest
Testament". </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for all the hard and great work</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Dave </DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>