[fpc-pascal] FPCUp FPC/Lazarus installer/updater: first Linux/Windows version released

[Reinier Olislagers]

Hi all,

With the help of the people on the forums and the lists, I've completed
the first version of FPCup, a tool that downloads FPC and Lazarus
sources from SVN, compiles and installs them.

For Windows, it offers bare-metal install functionality: it downloads an
SVN executable and the binutils (make, etc).

On Linux, you'll need an SVN client, bunzip2 and the binutils (make etc)
installed before running the program.

For Linux and Windows, if a bootstrap compiler is not present, it will
download it for you.

fpcup will compile and install FPC and Lazarus in directories of your
choosing (default provided). It will (minimally) configure Lazarus with
compiler path, FPC source path in a separate primary config path
(default under home on Linux, under LocalAppSettings under Windows).

It will place a desktop shortcut (Windows) or shell script in your home
folder (Linux) to the new Lazarus instance.

It is meant for side-by-side installs: it installs new versions of
FPC/Lazarus that don't influence existing installs at all. It can be run
without admin rights (on Linux at least, should work on Windows, too).

Fpcup can also be used to update the installation; it does an svn
upgrade and a recompile.

Testing on Windows (more extensive, I use it daily), and Linux x85 and
Linux x64 shows it works.

Additional testers and early adopters welcome ;)

Released under the LGPL with FPC linking exception, just like FPC.

Next steps:
- write a GUI
- complete OSX version
- check/implement cross compiling support (Windows x86=>x64)
- try to integrate offline help/CHM generation (e.g. out of fpcdocs SVN)
- other things that are on my Lazarus forum post which I can't reach
because the server seems down for maintenance...
- suggestions welcome

It can be found here:
https://bitbucket.org/reiniero/fpcup/overview
Windows, Linux x86 and LInux x64 binaries provided

Regards,
Reinier