[fpc-pascal] Problems with broken (or unclear) download urls for fpc-solaris

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Adrian Maier wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I wanted to download the latest freepascal for Sparc Solaris .
> 
> Issue 1:
> Opened the http://www.freepascal.org/download.var    ,   clicked on
> the "SPARC Solaris"  link.
> It opened the page for selecting the mirror.
> Clicked on Sourceforge  , which lead to  :
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/
> 
> The problem here is that this page doesn't seem to contain any Solaris stuff   .
> 
> 
> 
> Issue 2:
> I went back to the mirror selection,  and clicked on ftp.freepascal.org  .
> This link is ok ,   but it contains  the 2.4.2 sparc solaris FPC  .
> 
> This is not consistent with the main download page
> (http://www.freepascal.org/download.var)   , which implies that  2.6.0
>   is available for the entire list of platforms and operating systems
> (which includes the SPARC solaris ... ).
> 
> Perhaps it's worth taking a look at the download page ,  so that it
> presents in a clearer way which FPC version is available for each
> platform ?   For example create a separate section for the
> less-supported platforms.    The way it is now,  it implies that 2.6
> is available for all the platforms  - which is unfortunately false.
> 
> 
> 
> I currently have ssh access to some Sparc Solaris servers.   Does it
> involve a lot of work to create the solaris builds ?

I don't know to what extent anybody is routinely producing Solaris/SPARC 
releases. I try to test the compiler on v10 (and to a limited extent on 
v8) on a fairly regular basis, but I started off with [checks] 2.4.2, 
had to do a bit of hacking to get it installed (see 
http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=18271) and then compiled newer 
versions from there.

In practical terms, you might need to be on 2.7 since there are a couple 
of code generation bugs that weren't backported to 2.6- this affects 
both Solaris and Linux. Lazarus 0.9.30-fixed should compile and run on 
v10 now that some alignment patches have been incorporated.

In all cases, you need the freeware gas, gld, gmake and probably gtar 
etc., and need to be careful with your paths.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]