[fpc-devel] Comparison FPC 2.6.2 - Delphi 7

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Marco van de Voort wrote:

> But even when in theory (which I btw don't even want to consider), you are
> equivalent to C in this way, it basically means disabling the unit system,
> and users must start to manual maintain dependencies, and learn to
> interpretate cryptic errormessages if an incremental build goes haywire.
> 
> C users and developers are trained in this, and have their experience in
> detangling the web of deps etc, have developed semi-automated helper tools
> etc.
> 
> Inflicting this on the Pascal masses is unrealistic and undesirable.
> Sticking to the manual build principles because the FPC devels can handle it
> essentially means that nobody else will have parallel builds, or will resort
> to a system of doing full builds only. (but that is throwing away the big
> savings to gain small ones). Something that big C projects resort to anyway,
> I'm told.
> 
> And FPC even only in a few critical points.
> 
> Manual maintenance is simply too painful (and atypical for modular languages and
> its users).

But on the other hand, if an application programmer could disable FPC's 
unit handling and use  make -j  instead, choosing to pay the price of 
difficult maintenance, it might defuse the criticism coming from certain 
quarters.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]