[fpc-announce] Free Pascal 2.6.0 released!

Sun Jan 1 16:43:01 CET 2012

Hello,

first, FPC core wants to wish a happy 2012!

To start the new year with a bang, a new major release 
of Free Pascal, version 2.6.0, was uploaded to our FTP servers.

Changes that may break backwards compatibility are documented at:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.6.0

For Downloads, please use the FTP server at

ftp://freepascal.stack.nl/pub/fpc/dist/2.6.0/

and sourceforge 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/

as much possible.

Enjoy!

The Free Pascal Compiler Team

                            Free Pascal Compiler

                                Version 2.6.0

******************************************************************************
                              What's New in 2.6.0
******************************************************************************

Free Pascal 2.6.0 is a new major version of the Free Pascal compiler.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.6.0 for a list
of changes that may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

Platforms:
  * iPhoneSimulator target

Compiler:
  * Many new language features:
     * Objective-Pascal dialect, supported on all Mac OS X and iOS targets
     * constref parameter modifier for "const by reference"
     * Pascal boolean types with multiple sizes (boolean16/32/64)
     * ISO 7185 language mode (except for I/O). Features amongst others:
        * nested procedure variables
        * non-local goto's
     * Mac Pascal mode improvements
        * nested procedure variables
        * univ modifier
     * Intrinsics
        * sar (shift arithmetic right)
        * bsf/bsr (bitscan forward/reverse)
     * Delphi compatibility mode improvements
        * Nested types, class variables and class local constants
        * Advanced records syntax (no constructors yet)
        * (for..in) Enumerators in records
        * Class and record helpers
        * Generic records, arrays and procedural types
        * Delphi-compatibility of generics improved
        * Scoped enumerations
        * Custom messages for "deprecated" directive
        * Ability to use "&" for escaping keywords
  * New ARM code generator features
     * ARM VFPv2 and VFPv3 floating point unit support
     * Thumb-2 support

Packages:
  * Many improvements to the rtl
  * Many improvements to the database units (fcl-db)
  * Objective-Pascal interfaces to Foundation, AppKit, CoreData and WebCore
  * OpenGL headers updated to OpenGL 4.0

Details about these new features can be found at
http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_New_Features_2.6.0

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs that have been fixed in this release.

******************************************************************************
                              What's New in 2.4.4
******************************************************************************

Free Pascal 2.4.4 contains most library fixes from early June 2010 till March
2011. There are also some compiler fixes, mostly relating to 64-bit.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.4 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

Packages:
  * Many improvements to the XML units
  * Many improvements to the database units. 
        * Specially sqlite got quite some fixes.
  * Many improvements to the chm units. 
        * Including a commandline CHM compiler 
  * Many improvements to fppkg and fpmake for another round of testing.

Platforms:
  * Fixes for multi-threading support in OS/2 RTL.