[fpc-pascal]Kylix and M68k Port

[Matt Emson]

>How could it? Since the Core team does the bulk of the work, the core team
>would have to quit? (even if I give you all arguments below!)

Only time will tell. 

>And for the core team, the being free vs open sourcing argument probably is

>enough already to continue.

Look at the opensource replacement AmigaOS project. Say no more.

>No offence, but I think it will strengthen the pascal platform as a whole,


Or fragment it even more.

>and draw more users to all Pascal projects. Free, Open Source or
>proprietary.

FPC is proprietary to a Windows CE user.. proprientary is in the eye of the
beholder.

>Sure. But still that is also its weakness. 

So having millions of dollars to invest in getting the best people to work with
100% of their time is a weakness? lol.

>As long as sources aren't open,
>you are limited to the compiler as Inprise/Borland/whatever gives it to you.


Same with m$. That's the way of the world. I cant go out and make a car and
call it a mercedes now can I.

>> 2. It has the IDE lacking from FPC - full RAD, basically Delphi on Linux.

>
>Which has to be bought.

Better bought than vapourware. There's the potential to have one package that
compiler either way.. linux and windows..

>We have heard signals like that before (and also about a possibility 
>to develop open source programs with the GUI (read what about CLX!?!)

Since there is a srtong possibility that CLX will be opensources, I don't think
that's a major issue. Just think, if FPC could compile CLX.. hmm ;)

>Seeing is believing, promising is nothing.

I have seen. I believe. I can say no more. Borland NDA.

>> 4. Cross platform support. CLX.. the Cross platform component library kicks

>> arse.
>
>That still has to be proved, but knowing Borland I'm not afraid of a failure

>in that field.

CLX has a radically different approach to many background issues. It is truely
cross platform. I promise you ;)

>However for the free standalone compiler to be usefull, (parts of) CLX have

>to be free too. I'm curious.

This was hinted at. As CLX is possibly going to be opensourced (or at least
released as DCU's) I don';t think that's going to be a problem. 

>Also FPC is multi-platform too, and more targets too. And I'm still not
>convinced how deployable Kylix is on Linux (read on arbritaty Linux
>installation, not a prepped 6.2)

Official Borland line is, there are too many Linux distro's to certify them
all at the beginning. They will be certified one by one after the initial release.


>The rumours about the beta's only being able to run on certain distributions

>have strengthened that believe.

They have only certified it to run on Red Hat and Suse. That doesn't mean it
won't run on others. It will certainly run on Mandrake for instance.

>> 5. There is talk of porting the back end to other processors (Alpha, MIPS
etc)
>
>So is FPC, but at least FPC already has m68k, though it is outdated, and you

>can see that progress is being made (in the 1.1 source tree)

Turbo Pascal beat you years ago :P

An Amiga and ST port is about as usefull as a kick in the head these days. There's
no Mac port!!!!! There's no PalmOS port (mainly my fault I'll admit :P)

>That is marketing speach. A different processor is totally different from a

>different OS. And if it was all that easy, they at least would have shown a

>demo from other platforms (either OS or processor).

Yes, but aren't you presently re-designeing the FPC backend to be more generic.
What do you think they did to DCC???

>The FreeBSD port of FPC was done by me, without any prior C knowledge, and

>virtually none Unix programming knowledge, and it
>showed signs of life after about 50 hours work, most of it reading into
>FreeBSD. After 70 hours it could compile itself, and link to shared
>libraries...

But that is what makes FPC so chaotic and Kylix more exciting. If you hadn't
been inclined to do the port, it wouldn't exist. It's a foredrawn conclusion
that Kylix will be here early next year.

>Why hasn't one Inprise enigineer in a hobby project or so ported it to
>FreeBSD? Would make a great demo, nice marketing/press etc, at virtually
>no cost.

Do you really think that they would demo it if they had?? Come off it, they
got enough flack from the Linux DCC. 

>Apparantly it isn't that simple..........

The difference is that they didn't just write a bare bones compiler. They wrote
a compiler, and IDE and a whole component library that works together as a RAD
tool. So, no, as a commercial product a freeBSD port would probably be a bad
move at the moment. I think it will probably appear (at least on Intel) very
rapidly at some point in the future.

>I think nothing will happen on that front until Kylix turns out to be a
>commercial success. And even then, the financial branch will have to give
>its fiat.

It's going to be a hit. Believe me. It already has thousands of developers.
I'm already a 'Kylix' developer. I wrote some 'Kylix' code here today - okay
it was in Delphi, on a windows machine.. but there's no reason what I couldn't
port it in less that an hour. Do you get it now?

>The fact that he actually worries about it, and thinks that it is ncessary

>to make such a demonstration says enough.

He is a self confessed Linux geek.. he was probably checking out the competition.
I doubt he even worries about it. He didn't run FPC.. he just happened upon
it when looking for an rpm to install.
 
>We never got the patches for the BEOS support, and Be seems to be phasing
>BeOS out. The C-classes support is being worked on, but couldn't be on a
>short way. We want to do it well, not by some minor tricks.

Minor trick ;) lol

I doubt that getting Pascal to talk to C++ classes is a minor trick.

BeOS is still alive. It's just free for personal use now.


>Interoperability and linking with gcc has always been a top-priority, and
>will be, not only for our libs, but also for our users (and dirty script
>tricks don't help with that). Not only for C, but in the future also for 
>C++

What dirty script tricks? All they did was write some perl so they didn't have
to continually hand code C header to Pascal conversions. That must mean that
your H2Pas util is a dirty trick too  :P

DCC already has C linking.. C++ is a nasty one. I doubt anyone will do it successfully
without some very late nights.

Matt