[fpc-other] Re: [fpc-pascal] OT: Buy a Mac to develop for MacOS? Which one?

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Lukas Gradl <fpc at ssn.at> wrote:
> 1.) Do I really need to buy a Mac? Or is there a good solution to emulate
> one on an x86 Linux box? Just crosscompiling without the possibility to do
> serious tests in house is not an option, as my app has to integrate in some
> hardware-subsystems (printing, networking).

There are emulators out there, but they are horrible. I tryed PearPC
which is a free software one, and Free Pascal didn't work there. Not
to mention that it does not connect the CD-ROM driver and network
didn't work, so my emulated software was a black box without any
communication with the outter world except some hacks to mount the HD
image file.

My advice would be: Yes, buy a Mac. If you are out of money, you can
buy an used one. Don't buy a too old thougth, because I think it's
besser to have an Intel Mac, because this is the new architecture, and
FPC cannot cross-compile yet from PPC to x86, but can do the other way
around.

If you intend to use Lazarus you need Mac OS X 10.4 or superior as far
as I remember.

I have had very good success in the opposite direction for emulation.
I bougth Parallels Desktops and it emulates Windows wonderfully, with
mouse integration, reads cdrom, networking works, even managed to get
images from my phone! It also emulates Linux reasonably well, but not
as good.

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho