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

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Adrian Maier wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:45, Mark Morgan Lloyd
> <markMLl.fpc-pascal at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> The server is a SunOS 5.10  .   Uname   -a   :
>      SunOS  bebrxsu005   5.10 Generic_147440-07 sun4u sparc
> SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise Solaris
> 
> I'll  try to find some time for installing the 2.4.2  and building the
> 2.6.   Thanks for the link  :  the comments will be useful in case i
> encounter problems .

If you get stuck having a copy of my fpc.cfg might help. Email me in the 
address in my sig (below), I'll be at my desk intermittently.

>> 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.
> 
> I am hoping that 2.6 would be enough  (not targetting lazarus) .
> Compiling a development version would be painful because there is no
> way to directly access the svn server ...

But you should still be able to get a snapshot of the development 
version. However you might find you have to work in a progression: 2.4.2 
(possibly via 2.4.4) to 2.6.0 to 2.7.1. The issues are in floating point 
and variant handling, you'll see them on Mantis if you look for SPARC.

>> In all cases, you need the freeware gas, gld, gmake and probably gtar etc.,
>> and need to be careful with your paths.
> 
> The server has the GNU make and tar .  But the as and ld are not GNU.
>  And i have no admin rights  :  so i can install software only in the
> home dir.

I'd have thought that would have been OK, once you'd got paths set up. 
If you have problems use the compiler's -vt switch, since this will give 
you a blow-by-blow account of what's being looked for:

gmake NOGDB=1 OPT='-O- -gl -vt' all

Note that there are some things that I haven't tested. For example, on 
various Linux targets I've got a (Lazarus) app that uses PostgreSQL's 
listen/notify with a lot of pointer checks etc... I've never looked at 
that on either Solaris or Windows (which isn't where I want to go today).

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

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