[fpc-devel] 2.0.4-rc3 available

[Jonas Maebe]

On 15 Aug 2006, at 09:52, Dave Parsons wrote:

> FPC on OS/2 is no problem since we already have an up-to-date
> native version of FPC. Lazarus will require work.
>
> VMS Pascal is a bit different from Turbo Pascal but it might
> be possible even if I have to find an early FPC, bootstrap that
> using VMS Pascal and then use that to build a modern FPC.

This would not help, even if VMS Pascal could compile those old FPC  
sources into a working compiler. The reason is that for this  
resulting FPC compiler to generate any code which is usable on  
OpenVMS, this FPC must contain an Alpha code generator. By compiling  
FPC for the Alpha with a third party compiler, FPC itself does not  
automagically acquire an Alpha code generator.

As Florian mentions, the bootstrapping/cross-compiling is not a  
problem, but the necessary support in the compiler and RTL for  
OpenVMS and the Alpha architecture is. Once that support is added,  
it's trivial to cross-compile.

There are some very basic Alpha support routines in the FPC compiler  
sources, but by far not enough to even compile the compiler for Alpha  
(let alone to generate working code). There is also no OpenVMS RTL,  
although if you base it on libc it should be fairly easy to add one.

> My first priority though is to assess the current versions of
> FPC and Lazarus on Linux and see if they meet our needs.
> My minimum requirement is a version of Lazarus on Linux,
> Solaris (sparc) or OpenVMS.
> The porting to other platforms is a nice-to-have and would
> follow later if Lazarus is mature enough now.

Solaris/sparc will be a lot easier than OpenVMS/Alpha, since 2.1.1  
already contains support for Solaris/Sparc. It's not as well debugged  
as x86 or ppc (most remaining bugs are due to the strict alignment  
requirements of the Sparc), but it's already in fairly good shape.


Jonas