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

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.

Comments

Short FPC history and goals overview

[Halo1]

I thought I added the link to my original summary, but it seems to have gotten lost when I submitted it. In any case, Sourceforge's Project of the Month April 2014 interview with the founder of the Free Pascal Compiler, Florian Klaempfl, contains a good overview of the project's history, goals and development methodology.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[Halo1]

23 years ago? That makes it 1992? I was using Turbo Pascal in 1989!

Yes, Florian started the project when it became clear Borland was not going to create a 32 bit version of TP/BP.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[vux984]

23 years ago? That makes it 1992? I was using Turbo Pascal in 1989!

Re-read the summary.

It says 23 years ago development on the Turbo Pascal compatible project "Free Pascal" was started.

It does NOT say 23 years ago development on Turbo Pascal itself was started.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[TapeCutter]

The summary says: "Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal and later also Delphi-compatible Free Pascal Compiler" Perhaps you should re-read the summary, your paraphrase edits out the bit that makes all the difference???

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[Lunix Nutcase]

Which is still saying the same thing. The part GP omitted is simply saying that the Free Pascal Compiler was Turbo Pascal-compatible then also later Delphi-compatible.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[gstoddart]

Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal and later also Delphi-compatible Free Pascal Compiler

No, Turbo Pascal is not 23 years old ... the grammar suggests that, but reality doesn't.

I know this, becaise 23 years ago I had a second hand 286 PC with Turbo Pascal on it. And it wasn't exactly new even then.

Turbo Pascal has been around since 1984 .. that would be 31 years ago.

So, you can argue the sentence should have read as "Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal (and later also Delphi)-compatible Free Pascal Compiler".

But what you can't do is argue that Turbo Pascal is 23 years old. Because that's utterly incorrect.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[BetterThanCaesar]

Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal and later also Delphi-compatible Free Pascal Compiler

Parsed that for you.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[OrangeTide]

conjunction junction, what's your function?

I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember having to save my allowance to buy Borland Turbo Pascal for around $60. It came in a yellow box. A couple of other things I remember:

1) I am getting old
2) Those days sucked

Thanks to GNU and gcc we will never have to put up with that crap again.

Re:I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out on the horror days when borland finally completely lost the plot and the cheapest you could get anything from them was the beginner version of delphi for well north of a $1K. And they wondered why dot net left them in the dust. Which is a shame. Delphi was actually a pretty great system, in its day.

Re:I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I remember

[Gramie2]

They could afford if it they already knew and had confidence in it. How do people get started when the basic configuration is $1000+, and that's without client/server DB access ($300+ more)? And now you need to pay another $300+/year for a subscription to get bug fixes.

There was a time when Borland had a no-nonsense license (i.e. install wherever you want, as long as only one copy is used at a time), and they didn't have DRM that made the boot-up time almost double. They used to put customers first. Now they try to slip in restrictions in new EULAs, and back off if they get caught.

Free Pascal is awesome.

[shihonage]

I wrote a DOS game in 1996 in Turbo Pascal which used $B800:0000 textmode space to display the action. Thanks to Free Pascal I successfully ported it to Windows... of course minus the literal memory addressing and such.
Free Pascal is amazing at how it "just works" with legacy Turbo Pascal syntax where Delphi would present more trouble. Lazarus, the Free Pascal IDE, is also very resemblant of Turbo Pascal IDE, with some modern touches.
Pascal is an underrated language. It may have been designed for education, but it has many advanced features, the executables are nearly as fast as C++ ones, it compiles fast, and the runtime diagnostics are detailed and specific. It "just works".

Re:Free Pascal is awesome.

[MightyMartian]

I loved the Pascal family of languages. I did a lot of work in TurboPascal and Basic-09. The latter was basically Pascal with a bit more BASIC-like syntax. I still prefer Pascal style variable declarations.

Re:Free Pascal is awesome.

[Halo1]

FPC comes with a (mostly) TP-compatible graph unit for Windows (32 and 64 bit). It doesn't use BGI drivers, because it doesn't need to. Your mouse code won't work though, since you can't access the mouse driver under Windows using DOS interrupts. We do have our own cross-platform mouse unit you may want to use instead.

Re:Free Pascal is awesome.

[rochrist]

I also loved Pascal. Getting the UCSD Pascal system for my first Apple II was a life changing event!

Great work!

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I've used Turbo Pascal and Delphi for years, later followed by FPC and Lazarus. It was an enjoyable time. While I was no stranger to C++ even in those times, I simply preferred Object Pascal (so sue me). We even used it on Windows Mobile up to 6.x.

Unfortunately, when the time came (years ago now) to focus on Android, FPC's RTL had fairly serious issues, that I personally did not have to expertise to fix, and it wasn't a priority for anybody else who did.

While I have no plans to return to FPC, I'm still a fan, and I love to see it progress.

Pascal Changed my life

[wassomeyob]

I could show this article to my wife and truthfully say "we would not have met and had offspring if it weren't for this computer programming language you've never heard of". My first real job that eventually led to a career and a move to this city was because I had done work in school on a parser for Pascal, ended up programming on an HP1000 mini (RTE-XL), meeting her, getting married etc etc. Then I think, 'heh, never mind'. Very nostalic; glad to see it's out there. Thanks, Pascal.

Re:Pascal Changed my life

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:WHY?

[Halo1]

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 :)

Re:WHY?

[Nyder]

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

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

Does anyone use Pascal any more?

http://www.z80.eu/pas-compiler...

There are some pascal compilers for cp/m. Enjoy.

Re:WHY?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Because there's a buttload of legacy embedded apps running it? I know of at least 20 I've had my hands near, including one running on the International Space Station.

Re:WHY?

[MightyMartian]

Believe it or not, there is some embedded hardware out there that still uses DOS variants. The messaging module of our phone system uses an embedded version of DOS.

C vs Pascal == Perl vs Python

[DrYak]

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

And I was the opposite, I despised the vebosity of pascal (begin/end/etc.) and it's tendency to try to hide some low level details on the grounds of making it easier to learn.
To each his own preferences.

That's a definitive proof that the Perl vs Python debate didn't actually need theese language and the whole concept dates back much further in computing history.

Re:What happened to Pascal, anyway?

[metamatic]

The two major Pascal implementations (Free Pascal and Delphi) are fairly compatible with each other so it's not as fragmented as you think.

It's isn't fragmented now, because it's dead other than those two non-standard compilers, all the other implementations having vanished along with their communities...