[fpc-devel] 64-bit Migration (fpc/laz)

[Jonas Maebe]

On 10 Jan 2010, at 14:45, London Disney wrote:

> a) How do we use fpc/laz to make Mach-O fat binaries?

Compile the different versions separately and then combine them using the "lipo" tool.

> b) Which versions was the first to support Intel Macs and which

2.2.0

>     version was the first to support G5 64-bit PPC ?

2.4.0 (on Mac OS X at least, it was supported earlier on Linux). Of course, 32 bit PPC code runs just fine on G5's.

> c) How did the community made a tranition to G5 as well as
>    the Intel Macs in terms of related modifications in the
>    original FPC compilers (which sections in general, was it
>    the fpc itself or did you use other compilers, etc )?

I don't understand what you are asking here. Are you asking how the compiler was modified ("related modifications in the original FPC compilers"), whether people writing programs with FPC switched to other compilers ("or did you use other compilers"), or something else?

In any case, I think that very few people ever compiled PPC64 apps on Mac OS X (even with GCC), since there are very few advantages in doing so (the only real ones are if you have a lot of 64 bit arithmetic, or need a lot of memory). And only as of Mac OS X 10.5 it was possible to create 64 bit gui apps.

> d) I am still not used to Cocoa and Objective-C (Intel Leopard 10.5)
>    however it makes sense for me to ask how does fpc/laz link to
>    the Cocoa libraries/frameworks? So for instance under
>    WinTel there's the C/C++ DLLs and the compiler can
>    use the right calling conventions (WIN_API) to coimmunicate
>    with them (as an interface) -- so what's the mechanism
>    for MacOSX ?  LCL does use Cocoa doesn't it ? and if
>   I'm not wrong Cocoa is mostly or totally in ObjC...

With FPC 2.4.x and earlier: http://wiki.freepascal.org/PasCocoa
With FPC 2.5.x and later: http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_PasCocoa


Jonas