[fpc-pascal]Synapse for FPC

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Matt Emson wrote:

> > When I porting Synapse into FPC, then i find lot of incompatibilities
> > between Win32FPC and LinuxFPC. For example, look to Kylix
> > sysutils.pas... in FPC is not here lot of stuffs! Some stuffs is in
> > another units, some stuffs is missing at all. This is very bad
> > situation for create programs for Delphi and FPC!
>
> Strings.pp for example holds a lot of string related functions that really
> need to be in sysutils now.

They are shared.
What exists in as ansistring code in strings is also in sysutils.

>
> This is a topic that has already been noted. I think it's a time related
> problem - the developers have no time to alter what they see as a perfectly
> normal layout. The problem is that the unit structure has changed between
> Turbo Pascal and Delphi, but FPC tends to keep the TP structure, or invent
> it's own scheme. This is something I hope that 1.1 or 1.2 will address!!

We do not invent our own scheme:

We have TP units and Delphi units. The TP units are nearly perfect,
because TP doesn't change any more. The Delphi units were started in the
time that D3 was still the current version, but meanwhile D7 is out and
D8 expected, and the units change sometimes wildly. We simply cannot
keep up.

> > I know. I only not need this yet. That is all. And redesign of this
> > huge library needs a time.
>
> I believe that FPC is in the wrong in many ways. FPC would be a lot easier
> to support if it stuck to a single Object Pascal target and dialect. This is
> also a point that I've brought up in the past.

This is not correct. The TP object model/language is finished - again,
because TP doesn't change. So we have no work on that any more.

Now, the Delphi language compatibility is being worked on. There the
situation is more complex as Delphi itself still changes. What is more,
there has been feature overlap: FPC had features that delphi didn't
have, and vice versa. Borland seemed to take pleasure in implementing
something that already existed in FPC in a different way in Delphi.

> As for TCP/IP implementations on differing platforms - surely providing a
> uniform interface for FPC would solve this (IIRC that was the idea) and this
> could then be wrapped into a Delphi alike interface for use by Synapse etc.

It exists. See ssockets.pp in the FCL.

> Even better, without any alterations, I would hope that VCL style
> implementations would simple seamlessly compile using the wrapper.

ICS of Francois Piette - with some minor patches - compiles using FPC.
Synapse as well. The changes have been quite minor - even some potential
bugs in Synapse were discovered and solved.

So finally, I don't think we're doing a bad job. We'll get there, slowly
but surely.

Michael.