Would you support the development of a FPC GUI frontend?

[User137]

Unfortunately, if i wanted to buy a programming software it would be real Delphi. Main point of freepascal is that it is free. Can understand if you are asking for supporting developing the tool but i hardly ever pay or get paid.. for anything at all.

[LP]

I might not "support" it during the development, but I would probably purchase the final product (price up to $100, depending on its quality of course).

The feature I would really like to see is the inline help, which is available in Visual Studio: you document your functions with special comment tags and later on, when you are coding a function, it should show the information about function's parameters and so on.

[LP]

I cannot sell with the first, and I cannot include custom components with the latter. Not to mention Turbo Delphi is seriously unstable. Maybe I could find a copy of D7 floating around on the 'net at some place like EBay...

If you really want to use custom VCL components, you can circumvent the limitation of Turbo Delphi and install components using "dclusr.dpk". However, what you are doing doesn't need this - if you will be using SynEdit, you can safely create it in run-time. Other than that, what CUSTOM components will you need to drop on the form, which you absolutely won't be able to use at run-time?

As for stability of Turbo Delphi - I've had it installed for 1.2 years and worked on several projects, Wicked Defense being one of them. During this time, the IDE crashed only twice - after having it open for the entire day, and I was still able to save the work. I once remember that some component of IDE crashed once (after editing very long unit), but I just restarted the IDE as a precaution.

[Robert Kosek]

Yes, I can create the components at runtime so that isn't a huge detriment. The last time I attempted to I wasn't able to install components using dclusr.dpk, which I did know about and try previously--perhaps the patch bundle they released prevented circumvention by dclusr.dpk.

However, the stability I refer to for Turbo Delphi lies in the IDE itself. There wasn't a day of development that went by without 1 crash, and no less than 3 error loops with roughly 5-8 messages each. I mean that literally. It was hellish to work with, though the resulting application would run just fine. This instability wasn't related to my system because the memory has repeatedly tested out fine, through multiple stress tests, and my BIOS has had roughly 8 excellent updates since purchase. Turbo Delphi was the only application that ran this way. And furthermore, when I emailed Nick about it personally the response was less than desired. I would have hoped that CodeGear would be curious as to the nature of the IDE's instability and would have been willing to work with me to resolve the issue. As an eight plus year customer/user they lost my loyalty.

So, there's a sizable issue with me using Turbo Delphi at the moment. I might reinstall it just to see if it runs, but no promises there.

[LP]

Yes, I can create the components at runtime so that isn't a huge detriment. The last time I attempted to I wasn't able to install components using dclusr.dpk, which I did know about and try previously--perhaps the patch bundle they released prevented circumvention by dclusr.dpk.

Google for this topic. You'll find a ]However, the stability I refer to for Turbo Delphi lies in the IDE itself. There wasn't a day of development that went by without 1 crash, and no less than 3 error loops with roughly 5-8 messages each.[/quote]
Must have been a different version of what I am using. Turbo Delphi crashes much less than fully updated Windows Vista Business on my recently bought laptop.

[dmantione]

While any new development is welcome, before starting work on a new IDE, first decide its purpose. There are already 5 dedicated FPC IDE's:
- FPC's own textmode IDE
- Lazarus
- MSEIDE
- FPS
- Dev-Pascal

Before saying another is necessary (especially if people need to pay for it), one might define the situation in which neither of these IDE's is practical, or at least, a new IDE would give benefits.

[noeska]

What does the ide for fpc need to have:

- Syntax Highlighting
- Integrated Debugging
- Auto Completion
- Refactoring
- Code Cleanup
- Multiple Targets Support (arm, ppc, x86)
- Choice of Debug vs Release build.

[dmantione]

Okay, I'd say that is a feature list with ambition, but okay. Next step to decide is how to get there:
- What GUI toolkit will you use
- Do you use GDB or are you going to write your own debugger
- Are you going to integrate the compiler into the IDE or will you call it as command line application etc.

[cairnswm]

I would not support this sort of initiative at all. OSS needs all the help it can get and people that are unhappy with an OSS initiative should be getting involved rather than starting a flame war.

[Ñuño Martínez]

Not sure. Actually I'm using Lazarus for evaluation purposes, for "real projects" I'm using gVim and calling FPC directly or using a makefile and I'm comfortable with this way of working. Not sure if an IDE will benefit myself, and note that I'm using Pascal only for amusement: PHP is who gives me food today. May be tomorrow...

WTW, I think Robert doesn't want to start a flame war (not consciously, I hope). He has some needs that available FPC IDEs can't satisfy and he is looking for a solution, that's all. And remember: "free-ware" doesn't mean "gratis-ware"