[fpc-pascal] Error compiling on AROS/m68k: 1980-0-0 is not a valid date specification

[Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR)]

Hi Carsten,

On Thu, 17 Dec 2020, Carsten Strotmann via fpc-pascal wrote:

> I've trying FPC on an Vampire 4 SA machine with ApolloOS/AROS
> m68k.

Which version of FPC are you trying? Trunk, 3.2.0 stable, you built your
own, or you downloaded one of the official Amiga releases?

> Whenever I try to compile a pascal program (simple "Hello World" style)
> the compiler stopps with an interal error message "Error: 1980-0-0 is
> not a valid date specification".
>
> My guess this is something between the OS (AROS/ApolloOS) and FPC.

No, this is most likely the Vampire 4 or more specifically its FPGA CPU
implementation ("Apollo core") being incompatible with a true m68k. Are
you trying to use the SoftFPU or the hardware FPU version? This matters,
because the TDateTime type maps to "Double" (64bit float) in the run time
library, and the most problematic part of that CPU core is known to be the
FPU, especially with higher precisions. The error you're getting is
definitely coming from one of the TDateTime helper functions in the
sysutils unit. (Search in rtl/objpas/sysutils/dati.inc.)

> Can anyone give me a clue how to debug this issue?

It's entirely a speculation from my part, but if I can judge it by my past
experiences trying to investigate issues reported by Vampire users, I
doubt there's anything to debug in FPC in this regard.

If you're using the hardware FPU version, try using the SoftFPU version
(which should be the default on m68k-amiga, actually).

Cheers,
--
Charlie