[fpc-pascal]Kylix and M68k Port

[Matt Emson]

Hi there everyone,

Two things then...

KYLIX:

Is Kylix the Free Pascal killer?? It could well be!!!! I've seen it, and I've
seen it working!! I was present this Monday/Tuesday (27-28th Nov. 2000) at a
lecture session given by Charlie Calvert (ex-Borland R&D manager) on Linux and
Kylix. Kylix looks to be a Free Pascal Killer - no offence to you all. Why?
I can think of a few reasons:

1. it has the might of Borland behind it - and believe me that alone is worth
its weight in gold.
2. It has the IDE lacking from FPC - full RAD, basically Delphi on Linux.
3. It has a command line complier, that will possibly/maybe be released for
free (Like C++ Builder command line compiler.) This is a big maybe, but not
to be ruled out.
4. Cross platform support. CLX.. the Cross platform component library kicks
arse.
5. There is talk of porting the back end to other processors (Alpha, MIPS etc)
This is not necissarily fantasy either - Charlie Calvert said that if they could
get it to run on Linux, that was half the battle - the rest was much less work,
and therefore feasable. He didn't make any commitment as to whether it would
happen though ;) If you read between the lines you felt that it would.

What do you all think??

Two interesting things came out of the talk:

1. Charlie Calvert demonstrated how the RPM worked by installing and then removing
the RPM for Free Pascal!!!! (It must be noted that it was version 0.99x, so
don't assume he is a regular user of it.)

2. I remember people were talking about porting FPC to BEOS, but didn't know
how to get FPC calling BEOS C++ structures.. I can tell you how Borland did
it with QT.. they wrapped the entire library with C functions (a bit like an
API) and added a mechanism for tracking Handles (ie references to C++ classes.)
Don't know if that helps anybody. Apparrently they wrote a Perl script to automate
the process.

M68k:

I've had a little hiatus from the PalmOS port - and for very good reasons..
somebody else has beaten me to it. A guy called Christen Fihl is currently porting
his version of Pascal (HSPascal - a variant previously found on the Amiga and
ST) as a cross development tool on the PC. Not wishing to double up needlessly
on the development, I've put mine on hold, and instead have joined his Beta
testing programme.

Matt