[fpc-devel] Public access of FPC features and settings

[Florian Klämpfl]

> Am 07.03.2021 um 15:12 schrieb Florian Klämpfl via fpc-devel <fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org>:
> 
> Am 07.03.21 um 12:05 schrieb Alfred via fpc-devel:
>> Hello,
>> As a follow-up on a Lazarus feature request.
>> Among other applications, Lazarus uses some hard-coded list that represent FPC features. Like supported MCU and boards. It would be (much) more convenient to parse the FPC output itself to supply this info. And that could be made easy by using XML as FPC output.
>> Besides the above, I would welcome more features to be available through FPC itself.
>> FPC uses system files, located in "compiler/systems". With all kinds of settings. Like alignment and calling convention and linker to use.
>> FPC uses search-paths. Some user defined through fpc.cfg, some build-in. See all -F... compiler settings.
>> It would be nice to be able to get info through FPC itself about these settings and paths.
>> As maintainer of fpcupdeluxe, often I need to parse fpc.cfg by hand. Or look into a file like fpmkunit.pp to find the valid FPC targets. Or parse the Makefile to find all available subarchs when building a cross-compiler.
>> For a start, I would favor a XML/JSON output of fpc -i. Would be very nice to use its output.
> 
> I added a first experimental implementation in r48897. It does not cover full -i, so far only to show how it could look like. Any comments?

Meanwhile I completed it.

So if somebody thinks it’s useful, the json output can be added as well.