[fpc-pascal] FPC + fpGUI + Raspberry Pi = fantastic

[Paul Breneman]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I received my Raspberry Pi today, and had a bit of a play. I'm using the 
> Debian 6 OS with my Pi. I downloaded the FPC+fpGUI ARM archive (only a 
> 3.5MB download), packaged by Paul Breneman.
> 
>   http://www.turbocontrol.com/easyfpgui.htm
> 
> [Awesome work there, Paul. You can get much easier than than. Just 
> unpack and you are ready to work.]
> 
> It works fantastically well. I could compile all the fpGUI demos without 
> me having to do anything extra in fpGUI. How cool is that! :-)
> 
> All I had to do to get my projects to link successfully, was to install 
> a few missing packages, which were not included with the Debian 6 distro 
> for the Pi.
> 
>   sudo apt-get update
>   sudo apt-get install libX11-dev libXft-dev
> 
> I'll have to speak to somebody to see if they could include it as 
> standard - after all, the Pi is meant for developers to play with. If 
> anybody has contacts, please let me know.

Hi Graeme, I got my RPi a couple of days ago so we are on the same page! 
  :)  Thanks for all your great work with fpGUI!

I used this *very* easy method to load Debian on my RPi:
   http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

> I even compiled and ran the more complex fpGUI apps like the GUI Forms 
> Designer, DocView (help viewer), and Maximus (a sample fpGUI IDE). Even 
> FPTest (my Free Pascal Unit Testing project works).

DbgTerm doesn't compile so I hope to update SynaSer for that ASAP.

> We (our company) have some big plans for the Raspberry Pi, with a 
> potentially huge deployment. The first tests with this device is very 
> promising.
> 
> Kudos must also go to the FPC team, for supporting ARM so well!
> 
> Maybe with the Raspberry Pi and Free Pascal, we can get Object Pascal 
> back on the map, and in the hands of young developers. After all, Pascal 
> was initially designed as a teaching language - easy to learn, read and 
> write.

I have the separate pieces on the educational project page and hope to 
write a tutorial soon so a 12-year-old could spend less than $100 (US) 
and program an embedded RPi to monitor house temperatures and send 
emails and text messages (daily or more often if temps out of range).

I also think we should take advantage of the RPi educational 
opportunities.  If someday we can get a phone with native Linux that too 
will hopefully be easy to program like the RPi.

www.TurboControl.com/monitor.htm