[fpc-devel] New FPC language/dialect MODE, Generics.Collections and new branch

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015, Maciej Izak wrote:

> 2015-07-17 9:10 GMT+02:00 Michael Van Canneyt:
>
>       I think you better choose some more neutral name: GenPas or so.
> 
> 
> IMO GenPas is good name.

I have my moments of inspiration ;)

>  
>       You are free to do so, no-one will stop you. Your work will surely be integrated.
>
>       But I advise against it: The Pascal community is splintered as it is: FPC, Delphi, Oxygene. Creating another dialect will not help, because your code will only be usable in that dialect.
> 
> 
> I don't want to introduce too many new syntax elements, only best possible combination of existing dialects elements. In the new dialect we can clean up few things. The main ideas of new dialect -> less
> is more and KISS.

Many, if not most, language constructs in the compiler are enabled/disabled through some modeswitch:
{$MODESWITCH XYZ}

I think that the best that can be done is make sure all dialect elements can be enabled/disabled using a modeswitch.
The {$MODE XYZ} directive then just needs to set a pre-defined set of modeswitches.

IMHO It will save you work if you go about it this way...

Michael.