[fpc-pascal]The state of FPC (was: Synapse for FPC)

[Marco van de Voort]

> > As was also stated you are using the mind set of a single platform
> > development tool. FPC is not a single platform development tool and can
> > not be viewed in that fashion.
> 
> But all the source is seperated isn't it ? It doesn't all reside in a single
> dir? 

No. It never has, at least not since 1997 when I joined. Unless you of
course try to assemble it from the various files to form one source.

> Last time I looked you had a Units/Win32, Units/Linux etc. Maybe this
> has been extended by now?! How on earth is concatenating the include files
> into a platform specific unit and putting it in the platforms source dir
> going to ruin cross platform development?

It isn't, if it is only the source that goes to the endusers, generated from
a master source.  (and keeping the file with includes for development)

Those directory hierarchies only contain the parts that are dependant on
that platform.

Generic include files are in inc/, 
processor dependant parts in <cpuname>/
OS AND processor dependant parts in <osname>/<cpuname>

Files shared by the full Unix (clone) OSes are in unix/
(*BSD and Linux mainly)

Most of the other platforms like QNX, BeOS share directory posix/ which
implements a bit more restricted base library, you are probably more
familiar with the exact BeOS situation than myself)

Some Delphi parts (extensions to the system unit and sysutils generic
include files) are in objpas/

> You are finding excuses for the
> sake of it. No offence, but it sounds a lot like "father knows best" to me.

Hmm, seems to be as "Consultant knows best" actually :-)
But I'm sure you are a fine consultant.

The current situation is an agreement between at least 10 people, all of
them "fine" programmers, quite some professionally even, and at least 10-20
 
I urge you to be very careful btw, unless you really have real experience in
full (as in lots of OSes and architectures independant) portable
programming. Things aren't as easy as they seem.

Also do an estimate about how much work something as FPC is, and then
make it tenfold.

> > This can be talked about back and forth for a long time but I think it
> > is safe to say that this isn't *AN ISSUE* this is *YOUR ISSUE*. You are
> > free to use a different tool that is more to your liking.
> 
> I do. Every day, man ;-) I'd use FPC if it was friendlier. I'd really like
> to; I'd like to contribute too, but I always get such negative feedback
> from the developers. No offence again.

It is a group process. 
 
> Why don;t you make it more democratic and put up a poll.

Two possible answers.

1) Democracy doesn't work in companies or open source projects. In companies it
is who pays the bills, in open source projects it is in who wants to do the
work. Period. 

2) It already is as democratic as it gets. Only the voters are the
contributors not the users, and rougly pro ratio of their work. And the
majority of the contributors (not users) decides, the rest (users and
minority contributors) are left with the right to fork.

That sounds harsh, but it is the only way really. Outsiders otherwise dream
up elaborate plans, often with great grandeur and idealism, (the so called
Silver Bullet), the more realistic main contributors bail out or realise
that they are too few to even make a dent in the design on a parttime basis,
and ultimately nobody does anything except discussing and arguing on the
maillist, and a few concept source bits. 

Open Source reality is simply different from the business world.

That this concept works is also proven by the relative rarety of forking,
despite it being easy to do legally.

I made that mistake too before I joined core. Dig for messages from me in
the period 96-97 to see :-)

Only if you actually have done quite some work, you get a feel for why
things are the way they are, and that you can't tell core people to fix your
problems first. Ask them politely at best. I also had a lot of plans, and a
lot would become better because I saw things clearly. Ultimately, only some
minor readjustments remained. Reality came crashing in.