[fpc-pascal]Version 1.0.6 Prerelease is out !

[Michael Van Canneyt]

Hello,

Finally it has happened:

The FPC team is pleased to announce the pre release of FPC Pascal v1.0.6,
which is an updated and fixed version of the of the previous v1.0 release
v1.0.4 which was released in early 2001. Many parts of v1.0.6 have been
available for some time in the form of snapshots, which have been used and
extensively tested. This pre release is being announced to a restricted set
of potential users (FPC-devel & FPC-pascal), so that we can do some pre
release testing, to identify and fix any last minute problems. It will form
the actual release v1.0.6 in a few (2?) weeks, depending on the number of
problems found.

The versions available are dos (go32v2), win32, linux, os2, freebsd, beos,
sunos/Solaris, netbsd (beta). These are available from the freepascal ftp
site:
  ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist

And in the appropriate sub folder (alphabetically):

BeOS:   ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/beos-1.0.6
BSD:    ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/freebsd-1.0.6
DOS:    ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/dos-1.0.6
Linux:  ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/linux-1.0.6
OS/2    ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/os2-1.0.6
SunOS:  ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/sunos-1.0.6
Win32:  ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/dist/win32-1.0.6

These links are not yet published on the Web site, please use the above
URLs.

Normally the distributions are packaged both as a single large zip and as
separate smaller zips. They will also be available from the FPC mirrors.
It may take an day or so for all of the mirrors to get the pre-release,
so please be patient.

The FPC team would be really grateful if you'd try these - it is a chance to
ensure that the v1.0.6 release is as good as possible - including
(especially!) the installation procedures and documentation. Please report
any problems (or unwanted 'features') to the FPC-devel mailing list as soon
as possible, together with the operating system, FPC file name & date,
description of the problem and a small fragment of the code that gives the
problem if possible.

Here is a summary of the updates & major fixes since the v1.0.4 release:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Compiler:
  + NetBSD, BeOS, QNX and Sunos/Solaris for i386 support
  + m68k code generator (beta quality)
  * ppc386.cfg renamed to fpc.cfg
  * fpu overflow fixed
  * better typecast checking
  * better checking if passing a constant to a variable argument
  * procedure variable handling fixes
  * procedure inlining fixes
  * shared library has now initialization of the rtl
  * failed execution of tools (assembler, linker) now give errors
  * range checking now works correctly for cardinal and 64 bit operations
  * fixed crashing on 386 processors
  * fixed a lot of reported bugs

IDE:
  + regular expressions for find
  + disassembler window
  * winXP/Win2000 fixes
  * fixed a lot of reported bugs

RTL:
  + NetBSD, BeOS, QNX and Sunos/Solaris for i386 support
  + added PathDelim,DriveDelim,PathSep variables
  + keyboard, mouse and video units updates
  * append() returns error if file doesn't exists
  * winXP fixes for go32v2 mouse
  * lot of updates to make the RTL easier to port
  * bug fixes

FCL:
  * small bug fixes

Docs:
  + compiler internals documentation (available through ftp site)
  * programmer's reference update

Utils:
  * h2pas updates

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If all goes well, in 2 weeks the final release will be made, uploaded
and anounced on several public places.

Enjoy !

The FPC team.