[fpc-devel] removed MaxAvail,MemAvail,HeapSize

[Konstantin Münning]

Hi everybody!

Why in fact were MaxAvail,MemAvail,HeapSize removed from the RTL? The
explanation in install/doc/whatsnew.txt is puzzling me a bit:

  - Removed MaxAvail, MemAvail, HeapSize due to their unreliability
    (bogus/misleading return values) in multitasking environment with
swapping

Is the incompatibility of the source code preferred over a misleading
result? Such a major change should have a bit better explanation. I just
checked the FPC introduction that there is still the claim for
"excellent compatibility with TP 7.0" which seems I.M.H.O. now to be broken.

I understand that this may lead to strange behaviour of a program but
wouldn't it have been better to include a remark in the documentation
than to remove the function(s)? So it would be programmer's choice to
leave it or to change it to something appropriate for the environment of
the program.

So, what are now the options? What are the recommended replacements for
these functions? What's the best way to make working programs to compile
again?

By the way, there are still references in the RTL, the examples and the
docs to these now missing functions. Some seem to have been missed on
cleaning ;-).

Have a nice day,
-- 
Konstantin Münning