[fpc-devel] Project Idea: Mini-FPC

[Tomas Hajny]

On Fri, September 9, 2011 03:48, Skybuck Flying wrote:


Hello,

> Here is an idea to help new-comers to FPC understand how it works:
>
> A new project could be created which would be called: "Mini-FPC".
>
> The purpose of the project is to demonstrate how FPC compiles/builds
> itself
> and how it implements basic platform/cpu support.
 .
 .
> Everything else can then be left out like:
>
> floating point numbers,
> sockets,
> lists,
> classes,
> printers,
> bitmaps,
> perhaps even debugger or debugger support,
> etc.
>
> So it's trimmed down as much as possible to isolate it's core components.

3 comments:

1) Floating point support is necessary for the compiler to compile/build
itself, because floating point number support needs to be available in the
compiler itself (otherwise source files containing floating point numbers
cannot be processed by the compiler).

2) Needs of different users vary considerably. A user interested in
compiling a simple console 'hello world' program using procedural Pascal
needs only unit System and nothing else, a user creating 'hello world' in
a GUI window using Object Pascal has much broader needs (broader than the
compiler itself).

3) Everyone is free to create a special installation package for his own
needs, but I can hardly imagine something like that becoming part of the
general FPC distribution.

Tomas