[fpc-announce]1.9.0 aka 2.0.0 Beta-1 is out

[Florian Klaempfl]

As you may have noticed on the FPC website, Free Pascal 1.9.0, which is 
the first beta of the upcoming FPC 2.0.x series, is available. The goal 
of the 2.0.x series of FPC is to support several CPU platforms as well 
as being compatible with the most recent Delphi versions.

To achieve this, large parts of the compiler have been rewritten so we 
appreciate any bug reports about software no longer working with 1.9.0 
while it was working with 1.0.10. However, due to our test results 1.9.0 
is already much better than 1.0.10.

You can download 1.9.0 from the well known FPC ftps 
(http://www.freepascal.org/sdown.html) or if they are overloaded, the 
1.9.0 release is available at SourceForge as well 
(http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2174).

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 From the readme.txt text:

This a beta release and it still contains some known bugs. However, it 
would be very useful if you could test your projects with it and tell us 
when you find bugs. You can submit bug reports on the website or mail 
them to bugrep at freepascal.org.

This package contains a freeware 32-bit pascal compiler for 386+. The 
language and the runtime library are almost compatible with TP 7.0 and 
recent Delphi releases.

Free Pascal 1.9.0 is currently available for the following platforms:
- Linux (i386), both aout and elf
- Dos (i386), using the Go32v2 dos extender
- Win32 (Win32s, Win95/98/Me/XP/2000 and WinNT)
- FreeBSD i386

More platforms will be supported in future 1.9.x beta releases. Because 
release building is quite time intensive, we decide to start the 2.0 
beta series only with the most important targets. If you want to change 
this and create and maintain 2.0 beta releases for other platforms and 
targets, feel free to contact us, E-Mail addresses are listed below.
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 From the whatsnew.txt:

******************************************************************************
                       Whats New in 1.9.0 aka 2.0.0-Beta1
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Compiler:
   + dynamic arrays
   + interfaces
   + variants
   + full widestring support
   + default parameters
   + cross name scope overloading
   + support for the PowerPC, Sparc and ARM processor, installation 
packages will follow within the next weeks
   + new and more sophisticated register allocator
   + inlining across units
   + register calling conventions
   + SSE and SSE2 support for inline assembler
   + PIC code generation
   + new language mode: "Mac Pascal"
   + full boolean evaluation is now also available
   + threadvar support, enabled by using {$threading on}
   * support of int64 integer constants
   * improved delphi compatibility in -Sd mode
   * a lot of bug fixes
   * large parts of the compiler are rewritten to create a more stable,
     portable and maintainable compiler

RTL:
   + multithreading support
   * completely rewritten unix runtime library
   * improved delphi compatiblity
   * significantly improved speed of exception related code
   * prepared for big endian and 64 Bit CPUs
   * a lot of bug fixes

FCL:
   + tdataset support
   + html generator
   + 64 Bit file handling
   * a lot of bug fixes

Docs:
   * adapted to reflect new language features

IDE:
   * a lot of bug fixes

Misc:
   * improved cross compilation
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The Free Pascal developement team