[fpc-devel] Breaking change in FPC 2.6.1

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 2 May 2012 13:55, Mattias Gaertner <nc-gaertnma at netcologne.de> wrote:
>
> Please don't feed the trolls.


By no means did I mean to troll. It was a legit statement, and
something that confuses the hell out of FPC developers like myself.

For example:  tiOPF branched off version 3 so as to support Delph
2009+ support including Unicode (though no delphi unicode features
have been added to tiOPF v3 yet). With the mixed bag of Delphi
features in Free Pascal, I have no idea when we will be able to add
FPC support to tiOPF v3??? A brief attempt showed that FPC 2.6.0 was
not able to work, and I have no idea what Delphi features are
implemented in FPC Trunk.

Maybe the FPC core team will be so kind as to create a new "FPC
features since xxx" page on the wiki (similar to what I have done for
Lazarus). And on that page have a table or roadmap indicating what
Delphi features are supported in what FPC versions. That would give
developers like myself, and other commercial entities a clear
indication of how "compatible" FPC is with Delphi and if dual-compiler
support is possible in our products.

@Paul & Mattias
I have no idea why you guys think this is trolling. From my point of
view [in our company], I need to show a business case for spending my
company time working on open source projects.... especially
dual-compiler (Delphi and FPC) projects like tiOPF that require a lot
more testing. And no, tiOPF is not the only project like this that our
company works on. And again, I don't think I am the only developer
with this problem either. I'm pretty sure other companies would
appreciate such clear and transparent information from the FPC core
team, after all, nobody else is more qualified to know what FPC does
and doesn't support.

@Everybody else
I'm perfectly fine with Michael's solution to this message thread. I
don't mind deprecated compiler warnings at all - this gives me enough
warning to update my affected source code before the next stable
release. But I wasn't appreciative of Macro's idea of simply breaking
a stable branch without warning (thus I raised my concern). I'm glad
this problem is solved though.

@Marco
By the looks of recent events, maybe you advice is indeed correct.
Maybe my idea of only using the latest released FPC version is too a
narrow minded view. Maybe I should test FPC Trunk every few weeks to
keep more up to date with FPC developments, and smooth out any
possible compatibility problems in our code in preparation of new FPC
releases.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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