[fpc-devel] Breaking change in FPC 2.6.1

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Tomas Hajny schrieb:
> On Wed, May 2, 2012 12:27, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
>> Marco van de Voort schrieb:
>>> In our previous episode, Hans-Peter Diettrich said:
>>>> The solution is so easy: don't mark it as deprecated.
>>>>
>>>> I also have a clear opinion about Delphi compatibility: Every FPC
>>>> version must be compatible to a Delphi version. A mix of incompatible
>>>> features from different Delphi versions is useless.
>>> We don't have packages. That is what, D3? functionality, so we should
>>> now
>>> strip down FPC to D3 level?
>> There exist *limitations* due to the FPC multi-platform approach, of
>> course.
> 
> We cannot claim full compatibility to any Delphi version and we cannot
> provide complete list of incompatibilities between any particular FPC
> version and any particular Delphi version. If you're able to create
> something like that, you're welcome to document and maintain it (e.g. in
> our Wiki).

This would require a list of FPC features, which could be compared to a 
list of Delphi features.

> As far as what is more advantageous for users or not - your statement is
> apparently based on certain assumptions which are probably not valid for
> all FPC users and probably not even most FPC users. In particular, your
> statement is fully correct for users extensively using almost all features
> provided in a particular Delphi version and always rewriting their own
> previous code (based on language constructs and units delivered with
> earlier Delphi versions) to the newest set.

I had in mind users which must maintain legacy software, written for a 
specific Delphi version. Or for newbies, which have a working Delphi 
project and want to check whether it would work with FPC/Lazarus, too.

Some picky Delphi users jump in whenever I suggest to have a look at 
FPC/Lazarus, in a Delphi forum, and report that they downloaded the 
latest release and tried to run a simple test project, which failed 
miserably.

Other people observe a strange behaviour in an FPC/Lazarus project, and 
write a test program to find out what Delphi does. They are not really 
happy when either Delphi or FPC refuse to even *build* that project, due 
to arbitrary incompatibilities.

DoDi