Free Pascal 2.2 Has Been Released

Daniel Mantione writes "Free Pascal 2.2 has been released. Several new platforms are supported, like the Mac OS X on Intel platform, the Game Boy Advance, Windows CE and 64-Windows. Free Pascal is now the first and only free software compiler that targets 64-bit Windows. These advancements were made possible by Free Pascal's internal assembler and linker allowing support for platforms not supported by the GNU binutils. The advancement in internal assembling and linking also allow faster compilation times and smaller executables, increasing the programmer comfort. Other new features are stabs debug support, many new code optimizations, resourcestring smart-linking and more."

Comments

Mixed Reaction....

[chefmonkey]

Half of me is saying "cool!"

The other half is looking very confused and asking "why?"

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[TheRaven64]

The other half is looking very confused and asking "why?" The last time I played with Free Pascal was as an undergraduate, doing coursework that was meant to be done in Delphi. At the time, Free Pascal supported all of the features of Delphi required to complete the assignment. I wonder how much orphaned legacy Delphi code there is out there looking for a support route.

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[Dunbal]

I wonder how much orphaned legacy Delphi code there is out there looking for a support route.

      OMG, powerful alliteration and anthropomorphism. Here I am with a visual image of a young code snippet out in the winter cold, begging people for a couple pence for a "cuppa tea".

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[maxume]

You're mixed up on what alliteration is.

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[arth1]

Half of me is saying "cool!"

The other half is looking very confused and asking "why?"

I'm also feeling rather blaise about it...

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you calling alliterate?

You probly can't even read good either.

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[fm6]

The "support route" requires more than. a compiler. It requires developers who know both the technology and culture, which are drastically different from those of any other language. Not bad, just different. Which is why Turbo/Delphi/Object/Free Pascal has always been fiercely opposed by management (which doesn't care for nonstandard technology) and fiercely defended by developers (who love its tiny compile cycle and elegant features).

The suits will win in the end, because they're breeding faster. There's not a lot of incentive to become a Pascal expert, because it's perceived as a fringe language. (To some extent, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn't make it any less true.) So there will be fewer and fewer developers who insist on working in Pascal, and always the same number of managers who insist on switching to a "standard" language.

So Pascal is doomed. Yes, they've been saying that for a long time, because it's been true for a long time. Religions don't die quickly.

Personal note: I used to work for Borland and was responsible for documenting a big chunk of the Delphi API. Fell in love with the language during those years. Driven out by the sheer insanity of Borland management. Now I can't bear to work in the language — too depressing.

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[fm6]

it was FAST

First bug report for Kylix (Linux version of Delphi): testers claimed the "compile" command wasn't doing anything. What they didn't understand was that their test programs were finishing compilation before they had a chance to release the mouse button!

Thing is with Pascal: it's designed to be very easy to compile. (So CS students could use it for their first stab at writing a compiler; this was before grammar generators made hand-built compilers obsolete.) So compiling only takes one pass, and even that pass executes quickly. Very handy when you're working with an IDE....

Ach. Getting depressed again.

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[Nazlfrag]

Assuming alliterations are always apparent admits absence of afterthought. Learn that linguistics leverage lost lines, lest ye languish. Parent poster presumably postulated the Pascal premise presuppositionally. Defined, 'I wonder how much orphaned legacy Delphi code there is out there looking for a support route.' distinctly diverges to 'Does destitute Delphi data desire duplicate development designs?'

Re:Mixed Reaction....

[sg_oneill]

It was doomed, because Borland completely and dramatically misunderstood Linux. We ALL (Well the delphi heads) *WANTED* kylix, and we all collectively where sporting boners when told it 'did' GPL.

What we instead got was a buggy product that appeared to have alot of winelib in it (what the heck was that font thing?), and more to the point, it treated the GPL as if it was shareware. If one got the 'open source' version, which wasn't actually open source, we could make 'gpl' programs only, but by GPL, it meant "Well your program is GPL, but we are going to force a splash screen on your program that says its gpl and suggest updating to the full version." That was insulting as hell, and completely wrote it all off as an option for us.

Borlands problem is the attentiveness it paid the low-end and hobbyist market in the turbo days was completely blown out the window by the time it moved to Kylix. Hobbyists, students and small business MUST be paid attention to, or how the hells a kid supposed to learn your platform. Linux still has a large hobbyist contingent motoring it along, and in fact proved that hobbyist gift culture could power industry and commerce too.

What was really hard, was Delphi coders understood open source well. We loved sites like torry.ru that had huge collections of awesome open source librarys we could mash into our stuff to make our work days easier. In return we often packaged up our own little inventions and put them out there for other coders to use. Thats why we where so excited about kylix. What a let down.

Now of course we are being enticed back in with the 'turbo explorers' ('Hey kids! Its free!').

Except one cant install open source libraries by design. Way to piss on the Fanbase Borland!. Its a shame too. I was looking forward to returning to Delphi after all those years. Us hobbyists are still out in the cold.

I just hope people put some support into finally getting Lazarus and Free Pascal 'finished'. Its 95% there, and when that happens, we can finally tell the boss to cancel that Borland subscription, because coders *hate* being taken for granted.

I still like Pascal

[Colin Smith]

TurboPascal was great. Or is it Delphi now?

I still need a blue screen to write code quickly.

Re:I still like Pascal

[suv4x4]

TurboPascal was great. Or is it Delphi now?

I still need a blue screen to write code quickly.

FreePascal is probably the best representation of what Pascal used to be. Unfortunately after years and years of incompetent management, Delphi remains just an empty shell of its former self. The project was tossed around too many times now, shrunk down, and there are no guarantees for how long it'll exist or be sold to unknown 3rd party.

Many companies with active Delphi code projects are porting to FreePascal (other reasons aside from the sad state of Delphi include compatibility with Mac and other platforms).

Re:I still like Pascal

[tepples]

I still need a blue screen to write code quickly. You're in luck. Free Pascal works on Windows.

For some definition of the word 'free'

[everphilski]

Microsoft's free C++ compiler has been able to target x64 for quite some time ... it isn't open source, but is free as in beer.

C# programs even work in Linux, without a recompile, using Mono :)

Re:For some definition of the word 'free'

[andreyw]

Why was parent modded troll? The article says "only free software compiler" which could mean either a compiler that is free software (as in FOSS), or a software compiler that is free. Certainly, Microsoft distributes a C++ compiler that targets both AMD64 and IA-64 and is compiler that is free, although not FOSS.

It's this childish "Waah, its MS and not FOSS" attitude that make all of /. readers look like pimply basement dwelling dorks.

Ugh...

Re:What advantages does this have over Ada?

[Just Some Guy]

Does Free Pascal offer any advantages over Ada?

It's not Ada. Isn't that enough?

80's college nostalgia

[theolein]

Like many others here, I learnt Pascal at school in the early 80s before C, then C++ and finally Java became the standard teaching languages. The thing about Pascal, of course, is that it was designed to be a teaching language. All of that verbose syntax is meant to teach good structured programming. While Object Pascal will never reach the mainstream in any way more than Delphi did, it would perhaps have eliminated many of the errors made by coders due to the byzantine complexity of C++. At least thats what I think. That enforced verbosity made the code very readable, in a similar way to the way Java is, except that Pascal is native code.

Re:80's college nostalgia

[FlyingGuy]

Pascal is arguably one of the easiest languages to learn there ever was. It's very verboseness leads to readable code, but don't confuse that with weakness. Modern Pascal implementations like Delphi and Free Pascal are powerful languages.

The basics of pascal are simple:

// A simple function
Function FooFunc(X : integer) : integer ;
begin
result := X + 1 ;
end;

// A simple Procedure
Procedure FooProc(var X : integer );
begin
X := X + 1 ;
end;

Note the difference in the way the function and the procedure are declared above. Pascal passes parameters either by reference or by value. Using the var directive in the procedure declaration of x as integer I told the compiler to pass the value in by reference and therefor that value can be changed by the procedure. Note that when declaring the parameter this way I can ONLY pass a variable to it of the same type, or typecast a variable of a similar type. If I do NOT use the var invocation in declaring the parameter I can pass either a variable or a literal as below:

// pass in a literal
Y := FooFunc(1) ;

// pass in a variable
Y := FooFunc(i) ;

// Y will contain the value of the operation of the function.

FooProc(i) ;

// The variable i is now modified by the procedure.

FooProc(1);

// Illegal syntax, a variable MUST be passed to the procedure.

This should give you a basic start, the rest is really easy. Pascal does pointers, Structures, file I/O with either typed or untyped files, Inline Coding, Inline Assembler, pretty much everything you would expect from a robust language.

Not the first free compiler to support win64

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the first free compiler that has an official release. The trunk of GCC supports Win64 for a while now. Just there has not been a release yet. This has been true since 2007-03-30. Binutils support win64 was added 2006-09-20.

64-bit Windows

[zdude255]

Free Pascal is now the first and only free software compiler that targets 64-bit Windows.

Sure, but then you have to write it in Pascal!

Re:um? size?

[hangareighteen]

Your examply only shows that you don't exactly know how to use the fpc compiler. It's okay.. it's got a lot of options, and it dosen't exactly work like C. For example, the pascal compiler generates, by default, static executables. And C, dynamic.

Yes, simply looking at obj size will make this look bad. Actually looking at the object itself makes it pretty clear what's really happening. Remember, 'file' is your friend.

Pascal is alive and well in installers

[melstav]

InstallShield and InnoSetup installers contain PascalScript engines. InnoSetup is written using Delphi -- Pascal. I believe InstallShield is too, but it's been a while since I quit using InstallShield in favor of InnoSetup.

Re:um? size?

[arth1]

Both were run through "strip" to remove any possible debug/extra details. testp is from this pascal program

begin
            writeln('hello world');
end.

That's bad pascal. You lack the program declaration with specification of IO, and you also have a null statement at the end (the semicolon that should not be there). Try:

program helloworld(output);
begin
        writeln('hello world')
end.

why would I want Pascal?

You might want a stronger typed language than C, where there's no risk of signed/unsigned typecasting behind your back, or where you can limit the data type. There's no risk of your plane thinking it's flying upside down when you cross the dateline, for example. Or of spinning clockwise 182 times to make a 65535 degree turn, when you really wanted a 1 degree left turn.
Then there's legibility. Pascal /is/ very legible, compared to most other languages. If more than one person or team has to work on code, it's far easier than even well-written C or java.

I personally miss UCSD-pascal and p-code. It did what java was meant to do -- run as a pseudo-machine with pre-compiled bytecode in a machine independent fashion. Too many youngsters today think that Sun created that concept with java, when in reality it was a ripoff of USCD-pascal's p-code for a C++-like language.

Regards,
--
*Art

A Valuable Resource

[MacDaffy]

Bill Catambay has done yeoman work in keeping the Pascal spark alive in all its flavors. For those of you who are nostalgic, curious, desperate, eager to find a centralized repository for mockery, or want to try one of the easiest, most powerful tools you've ever used, visit Pascal Central. Tools, compilers, source code, links, Bill's article on the reasons Pascal is still relevant (which I helped edit), and a community of people ready, willing, and able to get those of you interested in giving the language another look (or a first look) a lot of help and support.

If you want power, readability, a maintainable code base, easier string-handling, no-brainer memory management, and an elegant "No-BS" language, try Pascal. It has survived this long for a reason.