Objective comparison between FreePascal/Lazarus and Delphi

[WILL]

+1 to FPC/Lazarus Support! It is very good!

I posted some questions and I had reply in a matter of hours!

This doesn't always happen. I posted a suggestion/comment about a problem in documentation and I got told to go fix it myself. No additional information on where to look for the correct information or how elaboration on my problem. I was also being accused of being lazy.

[Murmandamus]

Just wanted to let you all know that I am compiling and collating these (and some of my own) into a list which I am planning to edit into my original post. I would like to expand into some details as well, but I'll get to that shortly.

The main goal is a "quick reference" with details that can be amended as time goes on (as well as helping me decide on tools; I like to turn my research efforts into something more broadly usable by others; I might as well, the work is being done anyway ).

[WILL]

Just wanted to let you all know that I am compiling and collating these (and some of my own) into a list which I am planning to edit into my original post. I would like to expand into some details as well, but I'll get to that shortly.

The main goal is a "quick reference" with details that can be amended as time goes on (as well as helping me decide on tools; I like to turn my research efforts into something more broadly usable by others; I might as well, the work is being done anyway ).

If you would like to article-ize it and put it into the next issue of Pascal Gamer I'd be happy to publish it. As long as it doesn't bash any one party or speculate too much.

Re: Documentation-Debacle....

Yeah I was pretty disappointed. I think it might have been one of the core team members too. There was another of the core members (I believe Vincent, who I have a great deal of respect for) who did offer some information that explained some of the issues, but I really never got any information that would have helped in my hope to update the documentation to add what I felt was missing. It seems the core development team is pretty de-centralized and not really united in a common goal for the software. At least not that I've seen. The Laz team could use more structuring I think.

[JSoftware]

The Laz team could use more structuring I think.

I think what it needs is more contributors

[arthurprs]

Debuger is miles away.

[WILL]

I think what it needs is more contributors

That kind of falls into the 'too many cooks spoil the soup' scenario. More coders doesn't make a better project nessissarily. Yes the project could benefit from more people to tackle the LCL problem (huge workload, not enough coders to do it all), but there are other problems that plague the project that have nothing to do with the amount of coders contributing to it.

The biggest issue is that the original project leader seemingly bailed and others have been juggling the project as best they can. Kudos to them, but I've not seen much of an organizational structure published on the Lazarus site nor have I seen some kind of 'creative roadmap' other than a list of incomplete features yet to be completed. That doesn't mean that there isn't an organized core team, but publicly there isn't much of a presence which doesn't help to invite those seeking help or wanting to contribute. Mantis alone doesn't make a very good PR campaign to bring in more coders unfortunately.

It's not an easy project to run and manage. It has huge goals (some we've seen completed mostly!) and requires a lot of man-power to complete them. Hell I have a hard enough time trying to get help on this site, so I understand. It's just realistically the project lacks in PR management. If they could solve that then a lot of things like documentation and public interest will sort themselves out in the course of time.

[JSoftware]

That kind of falls into the 'too many cooks spoil the soup' scenario. More coders doesn't make a better project nessissarily. Yes the project could benefit from more people to tackle the LCL problem (huge workload, not enough coders to do it all), but there are other problems that plague the project that have nothing to do with the amount of coders contributing to it.

I don't agree. And as far as I understood noone called you lazy, or insinuated that. But I think that would be starting to stride from the objectivity topic of the topic at hand.

It's not incredible goals the project is trying to achieve. It just seems to me that some people put the wrong expectations on the program(lazarus). Working with GDB isn't exactly magic, but it varies alot from each platform apparently, so I don't know why it's only Martin and Marc working on it. There's a standard, but GDB implementors don't even follow it themselves. I think I'll try abstracting it in the future because I need remote debugging to debug AVR32's

"Good opensource software is created out of necessity; not necessarily altruism" - I think Marco Van Der Voort said something like that once

As far as I've understood it's the only same guy who's been working on the official documentation for the last 10 years. Without getting paid of course

"In opensource projects there aren't any lack of people telling others which direction to take; only lack of people willing to implement those changes" - Some other dude from one of the epic the Embacadero threads on Lazarus

[Murmandamus]

If you would like to article-ize it and put it into the next issue of Pascal Gamer I'd be happy to publish it. As long as it doesn't bash any one party or speculate too much.

I'm not interested in bashing anybody or speculating. Just the facts, and what they mean to me as a developer.

Yeah I was pretty disappointed. I think it might have been one of the core team members too. There was another of the core members (I believe Vincent, who I have a great deal of respect for) who did offer some information that explained some of the issues, but I really never got any information that would have helped in my hope to update the documentation to add what I felt was missing. It seems the core development team is pretty de-centralized and not really united in a common goal for the software. At least not that I've seen. The Laz team could use more structuring I think.

I think my main issue with both FP/L projects is the AWFUL websites. It is hard to find anything, and there are multiple places where you find similar information, but one version hasn't been updated in years, and another is woefully incomplete. So, I think it comes as no surprise that the organization at higher levels in the project is lacking; it is reflected in the public face of the projects. If it were up to me, that is the first thing I would tackle. With a better, more accurate, more efficient public face, it might attract more people to the project.

[WILL]

I'm not interested in bashing anybody or speculating. Just the facts, and what they mean to me as a developer.

And I wouldn't accuse you of such. I was only making a half-joke. Your thread was a really good idea actually.

With regards to the GBD on Mac OS X debugger issue; I found this in the FAQ... http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/G...r_Tips#Mac_OSX

[Murmandamus]

Oh, no, I didn't think you were. It is an important point. Like I said when I started the thread, I don't want to turn it into a "holy war", as it is easy to get distracted into going there; been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

The goal is to not only help us choose the tool that is right for our needs, but also see where the each tool is weak and in need of improvement. In my opinion, that is more pertinent for FP/L because it can be fed directly into the development process, whereas such improvements might lag a bit with Delphi because of the general nature of closed-source software development versus FOSS development. It still is good for both, though.

One example for both is the lack of a real macro preprocessor extension. While I really don't like C (and its dialects) as a language, there are some superlatives about it that I miss in Object Pascal; one of those is a decent macro preprocessor built into the compiler. FP does have an experimental one, but it is somewhat limited. Of course, some folks will say to just use m4 or some other macro preprocessor, but m4 is a bit heavy syntactically, and it doesn't have an "integrated" feel to it.