[fpc-devel] One fpc.cfg per fpc version

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 17 Feb 2014, Mattias Gaertner wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 10:50:02 +0100 (CET)
> Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> You can perfectly cater for different FPC versions in 1 config file.
>> It has support for ifdef, include and whatnot.
>> You can probably even have (I would need to check this)
>>
>> #include /etc/fpc.d/$FPCVERSION$.cfg
>
> Nice. Can this be added by default?
>
> BTW, documentation is somewhat off:

I noticed. I will fix that.

I myself didn't even know the behaviour for ../../version/whatnot...
I must dive into the sources to fix this oversight in the docs.

>
>
>> and any possible variation of this scheme. It's the problem of the packager to organize this.
>
> The packager is often only responsible for the release version. The
> other versions are then installed by the user.

True.

>> What more do you need ?
>
> I'm investigating what Lazarus needs to support to switch fpc versions
> more easily. That's why I'm collecting all the possibilities how people
> install multiple versions of fpc. I'm puzzled of the amount of different
> approaches - I thought two were enough. I wonder if some of them exists
> only because the user did not know the alternatives.

Probably you hit the nail on the head there :)

>
> Is there already a doc about how to install multiple versions of fpc?

No, because
a) There are so many ways to do it
b) There are so many platforms.
I prefer to document the possibilities and let the user figure out for himself what works best.

I do think we can certainly make the default behaviour more 'version aware' by installing 
a config file that already implements one of the different schemes.

That said, I am still not convinced of the need for this, I work since many years with 
a single pretty standard config file, which I've never had to edit.

Michael.