[fpc-devel] Announcement: Free Pascal CompilerDelphi XEPortProject (type override idea)

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Hans-Peter Diettrich said:
> Development can be done in whatever IDE you like. This is absolutely 
> independent from the compilation and linking of the developed code.
> 
> When you want to use FPC as an alternative compiler for Delphi, then 
> you'll have to make it output binaries in a way that the Delphi linker 
> can use. In order to make use of further targets, as already supported 
> by FPC but not by Delphi, you'll have to update the Delphi RTL 
> accordingly, and you must add linkers, debuggers etc. for all these 
> targets. Here the Delphi license gets into the way, so that you'll have 
> to implement a new Delphi-compatible RTL from scratch.
> 
> This suggests to me that your approach means much work without any 
> practical use, you better create that RTL first, so that it can be used 
> already in the compilation of FPC itself.

IMHO you'll describing problems he'll never reach. After he gets a Delphi
compiled FPC, he still needs to make the resulting product _work_. 

If I understood it correctly, this (making the Delphi compiled FPC work
stable enough) was the problem with earlier attempts, and the unicode
version won't make it any easier.

It could be bugs in Delphi, it could be bugs or assumptions in the FPC code
that only surface with Delphi, but either way, this has to be examined, and
that is way more difficult then cobbling up a bit of replacement code here
and there for places that Delphi can't yet compile.