[fpc-pascal]How do I get started?

[Jonas]

On Friday, April 13, 2001, at 07:42 AM, Jonathan Gold wrote:

> And... I don't know how to use what I've downloaded. I've looked at the 
> ReadMe's, the PDF manual. I type in (at the DOS prompt) the things they 
> suggest. I keep getting Bad File Command or something like that. In Windows, 

There are 3 ways to use FPC:

a) the command line compiler:

You probably still have to add the directory that contains the FPC executables to your path. To do this, open c:\autoexec.bat in notepad, look for a line that starts with "PATH=", add a ";" at the end of that line (if there isn't one yet) and then add the bin directory of your fpc installation (which is most likely something like "c:\pp\bin\win32"). Next, to compile something, type

ppc386 filename.pas

in a Dos window. You can create the pascal source files in any text editor you like, as long as you save them as *.txt files (note that if you save them then as filename.pas, you probably end up with filename.pas.txt). You may want to search for a programmer's text editor on the net instead.

b) the "official" IDE

Go to c:\pp\bin\win32 (replace c:\pp with the directory where you installed FPC) and doubleclick on fp.exe. Then you'll get the (text mode) IDE. It's still in beta thogh and not yet 100% stable (especially not the version that shipped with 1.0.4 of the compiler).

c) a third party IDE

This may be the preferred option for you. There are several for Windows, have a look at the links section of the website (FPE and FPIDE).


Jonas