I found the perfect IDE for Freepascal.

[Pineapple Head]

I use:

http://www.context.cx/

After the installation, start the program, use the Object Pascal as the active hilighter.

Then Goto "Options" menu and select "Execute Keys".

Click the "Add" button, and type "pas".

Select F9 and these fields should be filled in:
Execute: the complete directory where your fpc.exe is. Example: X:\FreePascal\2.0.0\bin\i386-win32\fpc.exe
Start in: %p
Paremeters: %f
Window mode is Normal

Capture Console Output is optional. You can check or uncheck it.

Now selecy F10 and fill out these fields:
Execute: %p%F.exe
Start in: %p
Save: Nothing (Save in the drop down list should be set to nothing).

Leave the rest of the fields alone.

After that your all set.

When you want to run your pascal program for the first time, hit F9 and then F10. If you hit F10 before compiling for the first time, you'll get an error saying that it's missing an exe file.

F9 - Compiles
F10 - Runs

As for F11 and F12, I think that could be used to compile the file in Delphi mode.

And anyways, I am looking fowards to making some OpenGL games in either freepascal(mostly) or Lazarus.

I'm still new to the whole programming joint but I just figured out how to work FPC with this IDE..

I hope this helps.

[marmin]

It's indeed a nice IDE !
Thank you for giving a little tutorial, it works with me now.
:lol:

I use the IDE of Lazarus now but because the lazarus files are very inefficient I may use this one instead.. i have to learn some win32 api then to see how i make a form.

[technomage]

That is a nice little IDE there. Thanls for the instructions , it worked a treat

[cragwolf]

Very nice IDE for Windows.

[sttillmann]

I'm using Geany for some time now.

Geany is a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment.

Basic features of Geany:
- syntax highlighting
- code completion
- auto completion of often used constructs like if, for and while
- auto completion of XML and HTML tags
- call tips
- many supported filetypes like C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal
- symbol lists

Before I've found this great IDE, I've used Vim the most time. Tried out FPC IDE and Lazarus, but Geany is my favorite editor now!

Best regards,
st

[cragwolf]

Questions regarding Geany:

* Does it do syntax highlighting, code completion, auto completion and call tips for Pascal?
* Can you change the colours used for the syntax highlighting?
* Can you add your own keywords to be highlighted?

I use Bluefish as my code editor, it lets you configure the syntax highlighting, e.g. colours, keywords, etc.

[cragwolf]

I tried out geany. I couldn't get code completion or navigation or tips to work for pascal. Also, their list of pascal keywords is severely limited. Fortunately, you can change that by editing the /usr/local/share/geany/filetypes.pascal file. Another problem is that while // and (* *) are recognised as comments, they aren't highlighted as such. I had to edit the source code of geany (and edit the filetypes.pascal file) to make it highlight those types of comments properly. I will contact the developers to add this code in.

There are a couple of limitations, too. You can bold parts of your code, but you can't italicize them. I like to italicize my comments, but you can't do that with geany. Another problem is that the background of the currently selected line is hard-coded to a light grey colour; this should really be an option, but I just edited the source code myself to make it white, the same colour as the default background of the editor.

But overall it's a very good editor, and it's now the IDE I use for pascal coding.

[Almindor]

I wonder why people don't use Lazarus.

It has absolutly everything from code completion to refactoring the power of eclipse and it eats less than 20megs of RAM.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious as to what drives people elsewhere.

[aidave]

i think im switchin to freepascal + lazarus soon
im really impressed with it

if i had only known about it earlier :cry:

[cragwolf]

I wonder why people don't use Lazarus.

Two main reasons:

1. It's based on the GTK1 library, not the GTK2 library. I prefer the look, feel and functionality of the GTK2 controls; I find the GTK1 controls to be ugly, especially the fonts. All of the non-command-line programs I use in my Linux distribution are GTK2 apps; surely it's time for Lazarus to join the rest of the world in this respect (or else go the KDE route)?

2. Lazarus is a Delphi clone. So it is more than just a simple IDE, it is also a RAD application. It has all the extra baggage associated with that: the visual form designer, the visual component palette, the object inspector. This makes the program more bloated with features and therefore more bug-ridden than a simple IDE. It just so happens that all I really want is a simple IDE, and I don't need all those RAD features.

The IDE I use at the moment also has its downsides, but these are not as significant to me as the downsides of Lazarus. There's not much in it, but eventually one has to make a choice.