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Free Pascal Compiler 3.0.0 Is Out; Adds Support For 16-Bit MS-DOS, 64-Bit iOS (freepascal.org)

Posted by timothy on from the of-long-standing dept.

Halo1 writes: Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal and later also Delphi-compatible Free Pascal Compiler, for OS/2 no less. Two decades and change later, the new Free Pascal Compiler 3.0.0 release still supports OS/2, along with a host of older and newer platforms ranging from MS-DOS on an 8086 to the latest Linux and iOS running on AArch64. On the language front, the new features include support for type helpers, codepage-aware strings and a utility to automatically generate JNI bridges for Pascal code. In the mean time, development on the next versions continues, with support for generic functions, an optional LLVM code generator backend and full support for ISO and Extended Pascal progressing well.

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WHY? by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the fuck would anyone bother supporting 16-bit MSDOS? Really?

    Simply because someone cares. Someone else is also reviving Amiga 68k support, because he cares. Our compiler is generally modular and generic enough so that such support does not result in too much interference with other functionality, or luggage that makes things unmaintainable over time.

    Where's the CP/M support for Z80 then?

    It'll get added as soon as you provide good quality patches for it :)

    --
    Donate free food here
  2. Re:Pascal Changed my life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    MIne, too.

    I remember despising C for its absurd syntax ("==", "!=" etc.).

    I still do.

    If I have a chance, I plan on doing some programming again with FreePascal/Lazarus.

  3. Re:I remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All those goofy memory models were of course courtesy of Intel, who foolishly stuck with the segmented memory model and 16-bit offsets for years. The 286 was a stupid design in that it expected you to break up any data structure larger than 64K bytes, and you had to fucking reset the CPU (after setting a flag in CMOS for BIOS to know what to do) to get out of its protected mode, back into the mode that all existing software ran in. IMHO it set the industry back by almost a decade having to futz with that shit.

    Meanwhile, I was happily hacking the Macintosh with its linear addressing space. Not that I didn't see 8086 addressing happen; MS Word 1.0 ran a bytecode VM that used segmented addressing and couldn't run higher than 1 meg in memory. Switcher/Multifinder had to give it special (as in education) handling by allocating other apps from the top of memory down.