[fpc-pascal] Issues with fpc-build-3.0.0

[Tony Whyman]

I think that my concern is that I fell into a simple trap. Now I know 
it's there I probably won't do it again - but I want to report it so 
that others don't do the same thing.

The problem is that intuitively "make install" should install a working 
program or bring an existing one up-to-date. Clearly, in FPC, that is 
not true and it installs a program suitable for testing with a separate 
action needed to make it the live version. Ideally, there should be a 
separate "make testinstall" for a test system and with "make install" 
having its usual semantic. However, it seems to late to change that.

A message emitted at the end of "make install" along the lines of "now 
enter make -C compiler installsymlink" would have probably stopped me 
falling into the trap and I think that would be a good thing to add to 
always remind the user about the extra step to make the compiler the 
live version.

However, it may also be worth adding a warning message to the fpc binary 
to warn when the selected symlink points to a binary with a different 
version number to fpc. That could also be useful diagnosing broken or 
partly updated installations.

Tony

On 29/01/16 15:26, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>
> I wonder whether a useful compromise would be to install a sufficient 
> symlink that  fpc -V  reaches a plausible binary. After all, I'm sure 
> I'm not the only person who has a symlink layer like  ppcx86-3.0.0  
> and having  ppcx86  forcibly overwritten before I was ready for it 
> might not be what I wanted.