[fpc-pascal] Systems 2005: A first summary

[Tony Pelton]

On 10/29/05, Sebastian Günther <sguenther at gmx.de> wrote:
> Tony Pelton schrieb:
> >
> > their (sun's) model is one where they offer the bundle that you need,
> > where you may want a big thick bundle with the Java compiler and
> > runtime and IDE, or you may already have the Java runtime and
> > compiler, and just need the IDE.
>
> For Java the situation is different. There are lots of IDEs, but Free
> Pascal has only one major IDE.

well, firstly, there appears to be at least one other decent IDE that
i know of :

http://www.bloodshed.net/devpascal.html

but in any event, i'm not sure why that distinction is important.

i think the point of the bundling strategy is not in the number of IDE's.

i think there are a few more relevant points :

*) the IDE is kind of pointless without the compiler
*) the compiler doesn't *require* the IDE.
*) giving people a complete, one stop development solution is a good thing.

but like Java, i think it would be of paramount importance to make
sure that the compiler can also standalone, without the IDE and it's
runtime, for those that want to use alternative IDE's, or where you
want to be able to integrate the compiler in with an OS distro or what
have you ...

> Of course the talk is _not_ about a complete fusion of FPC and Lazarus.
> 'Only' the following parts should be merged:
> - Website
> - Download directories on the website. Especially we need a clear and
> short explanation of the different packages.
> - The Wikis
> - Documenation? But this is a major topic, which we should discuss
> separatedly
> - Perhaps the bug system

and if this were my project(s), i personally _wouldn't_ advocate for
merging all of that stuff together.

i would keep the projects mostly seperate *except* for the front pages
of either site, where i do my marketing spiel about how the projects
are complimentary AND i would make sure the projects cooperate enough
so that they can always be bundled seamlessly with each other, and
each projects download page should offer their own product AND the
bundled product.

so the users get nice, easy to understand, packaging options both for
just the compiler tools and/or the IDE, but the projects still get to
run themselves how they want, and manage their own release cycles etc.

another thing that most java ide's do, which may or may not apply to
lazarus, is that most IDE's have the ability to support more than one
compiler suite at a time.

so for instance, the IDE might require java 1.4 for its own execution
environment, but might support being able to use more than one java
version for supporting the developer project, such as java 1.5 for
instance.

having that type of decoupling and runtime compiler switching with
Lazarus might be very handy in the future AND it would make it much
easier for Lazarus and FPC to iterate versions on their own schedules,
and allow users to upgrade just the parts that they need to, when they
need to.

>
> There is no clear separation between FPC and Lazarus for the end-user.

for a Lazarus end user I assume you mean ?

> For example, an average user cannot tell easily if he has a problem with
> a component or function belonging to Lazarus or belonging to FPC.

and again, if they were bundled together, but also properly
modularized, if the FPC or it's runtime was to blame for a bug, or
Lazarus was, the source of the problem could be better identified
because of the modularization, and then just the suspect part could be
upgraded to solve the problem, rather than having to download the
whole big bundle, after the bundle has been updated by the responsible
project.

>
> - Sebastian

Tony