Hello all

I have found that netlabs.org have a new project: a pascal RAD for OS/2 based on Free Pascal and Sibyl components. The home page for the project is http://sibyl.netlabs.org

They have chosen Free Pascal because it is open source, and according to the authors, 'some things have to be changed/extended'.

Have the authors of this project contacted with the FPC team? I think that it would be good for FPC to be able to include some of the modifications from Open Sibyl. Also, perhaps you could include a link to Open Sibyl in the Links page.

Sorry if this issue belongs to the fpc-pascal list rather than the fpc-devel one; I thought that this can be relevant at least to the OS/2 port development....

Best regards

Ramon Bosque

As far as I know, Tomas Hajny (hope I spell this correct ;)) cooperates with Yuri Prokushev. Tomas maintains the OS/2 port.

The main point of cooperation is to extend/modify the OS/2 RTL so it makes full use of OS/2 features, I think. Maybe they will also remove the need for EMX, and go to a native os/2 application model.

Michael.

From: "Michael Van Canneyt"
To:
Subject: Re: [fpc-devel]Open sibyl, a new RAD for FPC? Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:07:08 +0200

Correct (both spelling of my name and the fact ;-) ).

The main point of cooperation is to extend/modify the OS/2 RTL so it makes full use of OS/2 features, I think. Maybe they will also remove the need for EMX, and go to a native os/2 application model.

Yuri contributed some fixes for the current RTL, continues with the the job you've been working on yourself, Ramon (PM APIs conversion), submitted some additions making the RTL more compatible with that one of Sibyl (without breaking compatibility with previous FPC releases, of course), etc. He tries to make our text-mode IDE working under OS/2 as well. BTW, there are still some other APIs those would need conversion, so you (or anybody else) can join any time again, of course. Other from this - yes, we might probably add link to OpenSibyl to our WWW pages. I'll do so.

Tomas

Ramon Bosque wrote

They have chosen Free Pascal because it is open source, and according to the authors, 'some things have to be changed/extended'.

Well, open source compiler was not main goal. Main goal was just compiler. Virtual Pascal maintainer/developer rejected our request about supporting us with compiler. Another solution was GPC. GPC great compiler and part of GCC family but not Delphi compatible, so FPC is one possible solution (and only one 'in development' compiler for os/2 now).

Right. Not full, but many ;)

Maybe they will also remove the need for EMX, and go to a native os/2 application model.

Tomas plans to add native os/2 in addition to emx (because emx is crossplatform solution for *nix porting, so same for FPC can be achivied). So, native os/2 is usual os/2 application, but emx is more unix target.

But anyway, RTL not only one goal. Another goal is SOM support. As I know, at the present time fpc supports COM/CORBA interfaces (I don't know is them functional, but presented). Because SOM is IBM's CORBA implementation then adding support of SOM seems to be logical.

So, RTL, SOM and native target (with 16-bit thunking, no way for native target without thunking) is main goal of cooperatiion.

Well, compiler still can't be executed (SIGSEGV on GetEnv :-() and other small things, but seems to be more stable then before ;)

BTW, there are still some other APIs those would need conversion, so you (or anybody else) can join any time again, of course.

Really, not some but a lot.

At least

MMPM/2 (seems to be taken for translation by one person) Lan Server API
MPTN API
SOM API (lot of work done by Antony T. Curtis but for Virtual Pascal) WPS API (see above)

this is active API. Upcoming api (seems to be presented on most systems) are SysTray/XCenter API's, WarpOverlay, Mozilla (as fast as Embeded API will be finished by Mozilla team)

So, wide area to make hands busy ;)