[fpc-devel] bugreport: FPC 1.9.8 installer, i386-FreeBSD

[Marco van de Voort]

> I really had trouble installing FPC on FreeBSD.

Ah?
 
> I downloaded the big tar archive and unpacked it. Then I saw the 
> file "install.sh" there. Because of the file-extension ".sh" I 
> thought it was a simple shellscript for sh. So I tried to start it with 
> "sh install.sh". That didn't work. So I looked into the script and saw, 
> that it needs a special shell, namely bash. The extension ".sh" is very 
> misleading!

bash is a superset of a sh shell, the .sh extension for bash scripts is
common, and has nothing to do with GNU. It was already that way on 4.4BSD.
 
> Well, bash wasn't installed on my system, so I had to install it. You 
> should say so in the docs.

Maybe. Note that the shellscript _is_ human readable, and the bash is on
the first line, and the script is fixed so that it doesn't hardcode the
location of bash.

> Or better rewrite it to be usable with a standard-shell.

I prefer not, it is not worth the effort. I prefer to work on the ports
tree entries more, which are IMHO more important than the tgzs. Unfortunately,
I haven't had much time for that. It is still on the 1.9.2 level.

I could use some help there.

> You cannot silently expect, that everyone in the world is using GNU!

We never did such thing, the script is already made more generic for all
kinds of non linux distro's in multiple ways:
- the script properly lists bash as the shell
- further, the location of bash is not hardcoded
- some GNU sed specific constructs have been replaced by awk

We could maybe add a small footnote somewhere, but the chances are slim
that it will help anyone, since any decent sysadmin would look at a script
before he runs it anyway.

> But then again it didn't work. I looked into the script again and 
> replaced the line "VERSION=%version%" with "VERSION=1.9.8". Then at 
> last it worked. Just still the IDE seems not to be installed properly, 
> but I don't use it anyway.

Define _properly_? The IDE is not configured by the installer. Does it start?
  
> Apropos GNU: You still use the old Cambridge address for the FSF. They 
> are now in Boston. As I've heard, they plan to move again within Boston 
> this summer. So look out for their actual address on their homepage:
> http://www.fsf.org
> 
> And another comment on a new "feature". FPC doesn't let me manipulate 
> the for-loop-variable anymore. That's annoying!

That's by design. The whole purpose of the for loop construct is
optimization. Changing the loopvar frustrates that. Use while or repeat

> Well Pascal was always said to be a bondage-and-discipline-language, but
> please don't force that any further.

Pascal is said to be a B&D language by people that don't grasp certain
concepts, usually newbies using Basic, or even plain C because it is l33t.