[fpc-pascal] Pure FPC ?

[hinst]

27.01.2014, 15:02, "Fred van Stappen" <fiens at hotmail.com>:
>> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 08:53:25 +0100
>> From: XHajT03 at hajny.biz
>> To: fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
>> Subject: Re: [fpc-pascal] Pure FPC ?
>>
>> On Mon, January 27, 2014 01:38, Fred van Stappen wrote:
>> > Ok, i will try to explain better.
>> >
>> > When you compile fpc, you do > make clean + make all.
>> >
>> > Is it possible to configure fpc-compil and disable Delphi
>> > compatibility...?
>> >
>> > If not possible, no problem, i only want to know :-) .
>>
>> Short and simple answer - no, it isn't possible.
>>
>> Slightly longer answer - even if disregarding mode "DELPHI", there are
>> several other modes supported by FPC. More than one mode is used within
>> the FPC source tree (at least FPC, OBJFPC and MACPAS). The modes do not
>> differ only by syntax but also by the supported features, but different
>> modes use a combination of features often also used in other modes. All in
>> all, even if someone wanted to perform the surgery and remove all
>> references to mode DELPHI, the potential gains with regard to compilation
>> speed would be probably very limited.
>>
>> Finally - trying to remove a feature allowing users to reuse source code
>> coming from others doesn't sound very smart even if somebody doesn't use
>> such external source code today.
>>
>> Tomas
>
> Hello.
>
> Thank you Tomas for your cool and clear answer.
>
>> Finally - trying to remove a feature allowing users to reuse source code
>> coming from others doesn't sound very smart even if somebody doesnt
>> use such external source code today.
>
> Hum, yes, you are right...
>
> Long life for fpc....
>


More compiler modes = more complexity = more difficulties for people who support & develop FPC
Over time FPC and Delphi modes are becoming increasingly incompatible. I predict that sooner or later FPC developers will have to drop Delphi mode support because FPC & Delphi modes will become just too different to be built in one compiler. Maybe we will have two compilers: FreeDelphi and FreePascal. Note that Embarcadero introduces more and more new features to their product. FPC already can't support many of them. For example, string in Delphi 2009 and later is double-byte string; char is widechar. In FPC Char is still 1-byte char even in Delphi mode. What I think will happen is that at some point FPC will no longer be able to add more new Delphi features support to Delphi mode like it already happened with string=widestring, so Delphi mode in FPC will always mean Delphi 2007 and earlier. The reasons is that introducing new Delphi features to FPC Delphi mode is becoming increasingly difficult because Delphi and FPC are following different paths; so we are likely to be left with Delphi 2007 compatibility forever. So perhaps FPC developers can safely remove Delphi mode support in 2027... Well, for now we can still reuse Delphi libraries which are supposed to work in Delphi 2007 or earlier; these are good news.
Having both Delphi and FPC modes in one compiler had sense while these modes were similar; but with latest Delphi versions this is no longer the case.