Pascal Compiler Platform Support Guide

[WILL]

One more comment abot SkyOS:

- I don't know a thing about SkyOS but FPC is ported to SkyOS. See http://community.freepascal.org:1000...forum_id=24105. So FPC+SkyOS cell probably deserves "/" char.

Ah... from reading this one, I can tell you that FPC does NOT oficially support it, rather someone made a seperate port based off of FPC's 2.0.0 source. How am I sure? Florian will not commit to a port unless there are dedicated developers willing to continue the work. He stressed to me and Legolas while we were trying to add GBA support that he would only put it into the repository if there was a dedicated maintainer attached to it.

I'm not sure if I want to use the / partial support symbol in this case. Instead maybe 'Unofficial' or '3rd Party'?

[michalis]

Well I meant THE UNIX. But it seems that the original Unix is no longer with us. :? So I'll have to break this down further to include all the 'currently used' ones I guess. [size=9px](Though it does appear as if to commercial spin-offs --created by HP, IBM, OSC, etc-- sort of continue the original UNIX lineage... whats the story behind them?)[/size]

Oh, so you mean the one that worked on PDP-7 ? Full story about all Unixes deserves a book (and in fact it was covered in many books), see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix for starters.

Just a small note on Laz vs. FPC: What I consider as a main difference between FPC and Lazarus in this guide is that Lazarus is not just a packaging of FPC, but is the IDE, LCL and packaged components too.

That's a good point of view, because that's the truth Lazarus *is* the IDE + LCL + packages components, not "FPC repackaged".

- As for "FreeBSD" : FreePascal and Lazarus deserve a simple "X" there. Not "/" or "?" --- there's no reason to consider FreeBSD "partial", FPC works there since a long time and Lazarus too (from the point of view of Lazarus, differences between FreeBSD and e.g. Linux are very minor).

But is it 'complete' support? Or does it work only partly like WinCE and GBA? FreePascal.org/FPCWiki sites specify FreeBSD as being only partial right now.

Yes, it's a complete support, since a long time (pre-1.0.x AFAIK). It's absolutely comparable with the Linux support. I think that it's the most actively supported Unix, besides Linux and recent Mac OS X. Where on FPC wiki did you found mentions that it's partial ? Maybe you were confused by http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/index.php/FreeBSD page --- this is quite outdated (it's from around FPC 1.9.3 and FreeBSD 5.x line), but still it doesn't say that FreeBSD support is partial. Because it's not partial

As for SkyOS: yup, it's not committed. It seems that people that ported it would like to make it committed, and Florian would like to accept it (if supplied in sensible format, i.e. a patch). Mark it as you like, I don't really care about SkyOS

[WILL]

Well I meant THE UNIX. But it seems that the original Unix is no longer with us. :? So I'll have to break this down further to include all the 'currently used' ones I guess. [size=9px](Though it does appear as if to commercial spin-offs --created by HP, IBM, OSC, etc-- sort of continue the original UNIX lineage... whats the story behind them?)[/size]

Oh, so you mean the one that worked on PDP-7 ? Full story about all Unixes deserves a book (and in fact it was covered in many books), see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix for starters.

Yup, been there.

I'm not a big Unix guy, myself. Besdies Linux and MacOS X, I don't really care much about the rest. Unless someone wants to port one of my games over.

- As for "FreeBSD" : FreePascal and Lazarus deserve a simple "X" there. Not "/" or "?" --- there's no reason to consider FreeBSD "partial", FPC works there since a long time and Lazarus too (from the point of view of Lazarus, differences between FreeBSD and e.g. Linux are very minor).

But is it 'complete' support? Or does it work only partly like WinCE and GBA? FreePascal.org/FPCWiki sites specify FreeBSD as being only partial right now.

Yes, it's a complete support, since a long time (pre-1.0.x AFAIK). It's absolutely comparable with the Linux support. I think that it's the most actively supported Unix, besides Linux and recent Mac OS X. Where on FPC wiki did you found mentions that it's partial ? Maybe you were confused by http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/index.php/FreeBSD page --- this is quite outdated (it's from around FPC 1.9.3 and FreeBSD 5.x line), but still it doesn't say that FreeBSD support is partial. Because it's not partial

Ok simple enough. Probably got it mixed up in my mind with all the other BSDs.

As for SkyOS: yup, it's not committed. It seems that people that ported it would like to make it committed, and Florian would like to accept it (if supplied in sensible format, i.e. a patch). Mark it as you like, I don't really care about SkyOS

Added the 3^rd symbol. Simplifies it while being informative.


Guide Updated again!

[michalis]

Guide Updated again!

- Looks like you accidentaly duplicated "MacOS X (Darwin)" row. Maybe you wanted to add separate rows for "Mac OS X (Darwin)" and "Mac OS (classic)" ?

- In "Apple/Mac Pascal"+"FPC" cell you probably want to place "/", according to http://www.freepascal.org/fpcmac.html.

- For completeness you may want to add some original Mac compilers --- MPW Pascal, Metrowerks Pascal and Think Pascal. Those would probably get "X" for "Apple/Mac Pascal" language. But I can't help you here, can't say which ones of these are actually still used etc. --- everything that I know is from http://www.freepascal.org/fpcmac.html. Any knowledgeable Mac user here ?

- Important (at least for me): don't call licenses for proprietary programs "Commercial". True, they are commercial, but GPL, LGPL and all other FSF- and DFSG- and OSI- blessed licenses allow commercial distribution/support too. Free/Open-source software can be commercial. The fact that usually we get it for free is just a completely unsignificant detail Seriously, I believe more accurate name is "Proprietary", or just "non-free" (that's how FSF calls them, but I guess that name "non-free" is a little biased ).

- What's the difference between "Removed" and "Obsolete" ? For me "Supported, but no longer maintained" is an oxymoron Both BeOS and Motorola are kept in FPC sources, but noone cares actively about them, which means that they may not compile, no official releases for them are made etc. I would place this under one category "Obsolete: No longer maintained".

- (nitpicking) "Last official version" should either be named "Latest version" (and then some things changed, e.g. Lazarus version becomes "0.9.17"). Or it should indicate real versions (i.e. stable releases), then FPC version should be changed to "2.0.2" (2.1.1 is by no means any "official version").

Wow, this chart starts looking really useful ! Good work. When you will publish it more officially on PGD, I would suggest to publish HTML version too (along the OpenOffice and PDF versions, of course; XLS version is not significant for me ). Export from OpenOffice to XHTML looks more-or-less sensible, and most users probably prefer to get this in HTML format. Oh, and links inside "Website URL" row could be made "clickable", although (being ignorant with spreadsheet software) I don't know how.

[WILL]

I've recently updated the chart. Removing non-relevant compilers and splitting Delphi as it's 2 different products now.

Made a separate section for all the gaming consoles too. So you can see whats supported more towards the OS or a console.

Will post it up either tonight or tomorrow.