We have placed the first release-candidate of the Free Pascal Compiler version 2.2.4 on our ftp-servers.

You can help improve the upcoming 2.2.4 release by downloading and testing this release. If you want you can report what you have done here: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Testers_2.2.4

With this release we also want to test our new packaging-system. After installing the package manager (fppkg) can be called from the command-line. For now only the 'lnet' package is available for installation through the package system. When all goes well it could be that more packages will be added.

For more information about fppkg:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/fppkg

Changes that may break backwards compatibility are documented at: http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.2.4

Downloads are available at:
ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/beta/2.2.4rc1/

Enjoy!

The Free Pascal Compiler Team

Free Pascal Compiler

Version 2.2.4rc1

****************************************************************************** What's New in 2.2.4rc1
******************************************************************************

Free Pascal 2.2.4rc1 contains many bug-fixes and some new features. The main purpose of this release is to fix problems reported with FPC 2.2.2.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.2.4 for a list of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

All:
* Experimental packages-installation tool

Packages:
* Added support for TIFF reading/writing in fcl-image
* Improvements and fixes in CHM support
* Fixed linking the gtk2-package with gtk versions above 2.13.4

IDE:
* Added support for CHM help files

Documentation

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs which have been fixed in this release.

I adjusted my own engine to be buildable and installable by fpmake, and it seems to work mighty fine. Installing lnet by fppkg also went totally easy.

It would be great to have fpmake system adopted by a lot of FPC libraries. It would be even better to have a lot of packages available from default fppkg package repository
(http://www.freepascal.org/repository/packages.xml). It makes the compilation and installation trivial (right now, most(?) people use custom methods in their libraries, special allunits.pas units and such; even when it works Ok, it's better to have standardized method for this; Makefile.fpc approach seem to never catch up). Another advantage is that fppkg knows about dependencies. E.g. my game engine will soon depend on lnet, so installing my game engine by fppkg could automatically pull also lnet.

So when submission to the official fppkg registry will be open --- please let us know :)

BTW, I just committed a lot of updates to
http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPMake, correcting many examples to be compatible with fpmkunit interface in FPC 2.2.2 and 2.2.4rc1. I just started my fun with fpmake, so if anyone is more knowledgeable in this, please correct or revert any blunders I made.

Michalis

As soon as it is tested sufficiently, and documented properly :-)

The idea is that at least the FPC packages would also be put in the registry. This would allow us to distribute newer versions more quickly than now.

Note that the architecture is such that other people can also set up repositories.

I'll have a look at it as soon as time permits !

Michael.

I think I found a possible issue with 2.2.4.
I can not recall experiencing this issue under 2.2.3 (from mid December 2008).

I have data (tax rates) stored in a Firebird 2.1 database. The field storing the rate is defined as Numeric(3,3). I use SqlDB (via tiOPF) to retrieve the data. That specific column is retrieved as follows:

  lData.Rate        := Query.FieldAsFloat['TAXRATE'];

lData.Rate is declared as a Single type.

When I display the taxrate under Linux using the following method, everything works as expected.

function DisplayPercentage(const AValue: Single): string;
begin
  writeln('AValue = ', AValue);
  Result := Format('%.2f', [AValue]);
  writeln('Formatted Avalue = ', Result);
  writeln('---');
end;

Output under Linux:
===============
AValue = 0.000001192E+00
Formatted Avalue = 0.00
---
AValue = 1.400000012E+01
Formatted Avalue = 14.00
---

When I display it under Windows (2000 or XP) I get a vastly different answer.

Output under Windows 2000 & XP
====================
AValue = 4.249977051E+03

Formatted AValue = 4249.98

----

AValue = 4.249440918E+03

Formatted AValue = 4249.44

----

As you can see the values are very different!! I have no idea why.

I'm using FPC checked out from:
http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/branches/fixes_2_2 Revision: 12619

Both Linux and Windows systems are using the exact same revision of FPC. I'll try and put together a small test project and see if I can pinpoint the exact location of the issue.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

lData.Rate := Query.FieldAsFloat['TAXRATE'];

FieldAsFloat translates to the underlying call to SqlDB as follows

function TtiQueryDataset.GetFieldAsFloat(const AName: string): extended;
begin
  Result := FDataset.FieldByName(AName).AsFloat;
end;

Creating a simple test application as follows works fine on Linux and Windows... So it doesn't seem to be a Format() issue.

=====================
var
  s: single;
  t: string;
begin
  s := 14.00;
  writeln('AValue = ', s);
  t := Format('%.2f', [s]);
  writeln('Formatted Avalue = ', t);
  writeln('---');
end.
======================

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/