Hi there everyone,

Two things then...

KYLIX:

Is Kylix the Free Pascal killer?? It could well be!!!! I've seen it, and I've seen it working!! I was present this Monday/Tuesday (27-28th Nov. 2000) at a lecture session given by Charlie Calvert (ex-Borland R&D manager) on Linux and Kylix. Kylix looks to be a Free Pascal Killer - no offence to you all. Why? I can think of a few reasons:

1. it has the might of Borland behind it - and believe me that alone is worth its weight in gold.
2. It has the IDE lacking from FPC - full RAD, basically Delphi on Linux.
3. It has a command line complier, that will possibly/maybe be released for free (Like C++ Builder command line compiler.) This is a big maybe, but not to be ruled out.
4. Cross platform support. CLX.. the Cross platform component library kicks arse.
5. There is talk of porting the back end to other processors (Alpha, MIPS etc) This is not necissarily fantasy either - Charlie Calvert said that if they could get it to run on Linux, that was half the battle - the rest was much less work, and therefore feasable. He didn't make any commitment as to whether it would happen though ;) If you read between the lines you felt that it would.

What do you all think??

Two interesting things came out of the talk:

1. Charlie Calvert demonstrated how the RPM worked by installing and then removing the RPM for Free Pascal!!!! (It must be noted that it was version 0.99x, so don't assume he is a regular user of it.)

2. I remember people were talking about porting FPC to BEOS, but didn't know how to get FPC calling BEOS C++ structures.. I can tell you how Borland did it with QT.. they wrapped the entire library with C functions (a bit like an API) and added a mechanism for tracking Handles (ie references to C++ classes.) Don't know if that helps anybody. Apparrently they wrote a Perl script to automate the process.

M68k:

I've had a little hiatus from the PalmOS port - and for very good reasons.. somebody else has beaten me to it. A guy called Christen Fihl is currently porting his version of Pascal (HSPascal - a variant previously found on the Amiga and ST) as a cross development tool on the PC. Not wishing to double up needlessly on the development, I've put mine on hold, and instead have joined his Beta testing programme.

Matt

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How could it? Since the Core team does the bulk of the work, the core team would have to quit? (even if I give you all arguments below!)

And for the core team, the being free vs open sourcing argument probably is enough already to continue.

It could well be!!!! I've seen it, and I've seen it working!! I was present this Monday/Tuesday (27-28th Nov. 2000) at a lecture session given by Charlie Calvert (ex-Borland R&D manager) on Linux and Kylix. Kylix looks to be a Free Pascal Killer - no offence to you all. Why?

No offence, but I think it will strengthen the pascal platform as a whole, and draw more users to all Pascal projects. Free, Open Source or proprietary.

I can think of a few reasons: 1. it has the might of Borland behind it - and believe me that alone is worth its weight in gold.

Sure. But still that is also its weakness. As long as sources aren't open, you are limited to the compiler as Inprise/Borland/whatever gives it to you.

2. It has the IDE lacking from FPC - full RAD, basically Delphi on Linux.

Which has to be bought.

3. It has a command line complier, that will possibly/maybe be released for free (Like C++ Builder command line compiler.) This is a big maybe, but not to be ruled out.

We have heard signals like that before (and also about a possibility to develop open source programs with the GUI (read what about CLX!?!)

Seeing is believing, promising is nothing.

4. Cross platform support. CLX.. the Cross platform component library kicks arse.

That still has to be proved, but knowing Borland I'm not afraid of a failure in that field.

However for the free standalone compiler to be usefull, (parts of) CLX have to be free too. I'm curious.

Also FPC is multi-platform too, and more targets too. And I'm still not convinced how deployable Kylix is on Linux (read on arbritaty Linux installation, not a prepped 6.2)

The rumours about the beta's only being able to run on certain distributions have strengthened that believe.

5. There is talk of porting the back end to other processors (Alpha, MIPS etc)

So is FPC, but at least FPC already has m68k, though it is outdated, and you can see that progress is being made (in the 1.1 source tree)

This is not necissarily fantasy either - Charlie Calvert said that if they could get it to run on Linux, that was half the battle - the rest was much less work, and therefore feasable.

That is marketing speach. A different processor is totally different from a different OS. And if it was all that easy, they at least would have shown a demo from other platforms (either OS or processor).

The FreeBSD port of FPC was done by me, without any prior C knowledge, and virtually none Unix programming knowledge, and it
showed signs of life after about 50 hours work, most of it reading into FreeBSD. After 70 hours it could compile itself, and link to shared libraries...

Why hasn't one Inprise enigineer in a hobby project or so ported it to FreeBSD? Would make a great demo, nice marketing/press etc, at virtually no cost.

Apparantly it isn't that simple..........

He didn't make any commitment as to whether it would happen though ;) If you read between the lines you felt that it would.

I think nothing will happen on that front until Kylix turns out to be a commercial success. And even then, the financial branch will have to give its fiat.

What do you all think??

It might eat of some of the users, specially the GUI ones. But on the other hand, it could draw large masses to Pascal-on-unix of which we would get our fair share, even if they only use FPC next to Kylix. I'm not worried, and wouldn't be surprised if Kylix would even strengthen FPC, both when it is a success or failure. :-)

The fact that he actually worries about it, and thinks that it is ncessary to make such a demonstration says enough.

We never got the patches for the BEOS support, and Be seems to be phasing BeOS out. The C-classes support is being worked on, but couldn't be on a short way. We want to do it well, not by some minor tricks.

Interoperability and linking with gcc has always been a top-priority, and will be, not only for our libs, but also for our users (and dirty script tricks don't help with that). Not only for C, but in the future also for C++

No offence, but I think it will strengthen the pascal platform as a whole, and draw more users to all Pascal projects. Free, Open Source or proprietary.

I don't use Linux, and until this morning I've never even heard of Kylix, but I don't personally think FPC is in much trouble. I applaud the efforts of all involved, and find myself at times marveling at the final product. To have created such an elaborate and indepth project like FPC must have been (and I'm sure continues to be) a staggering effort. And they give it away. For free. With source. To me, that's motive enough to support it, if for no other reason then to show my appreciation for all that effort.

But even though it's free I still wouldn't have wasted my time learning FPC if it sucked. And as we all know it doesn't.

So, to the entire FPC team; thanks guys...

Jim

If we would apply the same reasoning to GCC it would also no longer exist, yet it does and continues to thrive; the whole linux would not exist without it.

The lesson to be learned is that it is no use comparing free products with commercial ones. Both can perfectly co-exist together. The one just provides a free alternative for the other; both have their supporters and opponents...

Yes, there is some talk about releasing some things as open source, but Borland is and remains a commercial company and therefore must make money to pay its employees, so I wouldn't expect miracles there...

The starting points for FPC and Borland are different, so there will never be any complete comparison possible. With some more work we'll be able to compile any of borland's code, so we're not worried about FPC's future; we have the download statistics to back this up, so...

Michael.

How could it? Since the Core team does the bulk of the work, the core team would have to quit? (even if I give you all arguments below!)

Only time will tell.

And for the core team, the being free vs open sourcing argument probably is enough already to continue.

Look at the opensource replacement AmigaOS project. Say no more.

No offence, but I think it will strengthen the pascal platform as a whole,

Or fragment it even more.

and draw more users to all Pascal projects. Free, Open Source or proprietary.

FPC is proprietary to a Windows CE user.. proprientary is in the eye of the beholder.

Sure. But still that is also its weakness.

So having millions of dollars to invest in getting the best people to work with 100% of their time is a weakness? lol.

As long as sources aren't open, you are limited to the compiler as Inprise/Borland/whatever gives it to you.

Same with m$. That's the way of the world. I cant go out and make a car and call it a mercedes now can I.

> 2. It has the IDE lacking from FPC - full RAD, basically Delphi on Linux. Which has to be bought.

Better bought than vapourware. There's the potential to have one package that compiler either way.. linux and windows..

We have heard signals like that before (and also about a possibility to develop open source programs with the GUI (read what about CLX!?!)

Since there is a srtong possibility that CLX will be opensources, I don't think that's a major issue. Just think, if FPC could compile CLX.. hmm ;)

Seeing is believing, promising is nothing.

I have seen. I believe. I can say no more. Borland NDA.

CLX has a radically different approach to many background issues. It is truely cross platform. I promise you ;)

However for the free standalone compiler to be usefull, (parts of) CLX have to be free too. I'm curious.

This was hinted at. As CLX is possibly going to be opensourced (or at least released as DCU's) I don';t think that's going to be a problem.

Also FPC is multi-platform too, and more targets too. And I'm still not convinced how deployable Kylix is on Linux (read on arbritaty Linux installation, not a prepped 6.2)

Official Borland line is, there are too many Linux distro's to certify them all at the beginning. They will be certified one by one after the initial release.

The rumours about the beta's only being able to run on certain distributions have strengthened that believe.

They have only certified it to run on Red Hat and Suse. That doesn't mean it won't run on others. It will certainly run on Mandrake for instance.

> 5. There is talk of porting the back end to other processors (Alpha, MIPS

etc)

So is FPC, but at least FPC already has m68k, though it is outdated, and you can see that progress is being made (in the 1.1 source tree)

Turbo Pascal beat you years ago :P

An Amiga and ST port is about as usefull as a kick in the head these days. There's no Mac port!!!!! There's no PalmOS port (mainly my fault I'll admit :P)

Yes, but aren't you presently re-designeing the FPC backend to be more generic. What do you think they did to DCC???

But that is what makes FPC so chaotic and Kylix more exciting. If you hadn't been inclined to do the port, it wouldn't exist. It's a foredrawn conclusion that Kylix will be here early next year.

Why hasn't one Inprise enigineer in a hobby project or so ported it to FreeBSD? Would make a great demo, nice marketing/press etc, at virtually no cost.

Do you really think that they would demo it if they had?? Come off it, they got enough flack from the Linux DCC.

Apparantly it isn't that simple..........

The difference is that they didn't just write a bare bones compiler. They wrote a compiler, and IDE and a whole component library that works together as a RAD tool. So, no, as a commercial product a freeBSD port would probably be a bad move at the moment. I think it will probably appear (at least on Intel) very rapidly at some point in the future.

I think nothing will happen on that front until Kylix turns out to be a commercial success. And even then, the financial branch will have to give its fiat.

It's going to be a hit. Believe me. It already has thousands of developers. I'm already a 'Kylix' developer. I wrote some 'Kylix' code here today - okay it was in Delphi, on a windows machine.. but there's no reason what I couldn't port it in less that an hour. Do you get it now?

The fact that he actually worries about it, and thinks that it is ncessary to make such a demonstration says enough.

He is a self confessed Linux geek.. he was probably checking out the competition. I doubt he even worries about it. He didn't run FPC.. he just happened upon it when looking for an rpm to install.

We never got the patches for the BEOS support, and Be seems to be phasing BeOS out. The C-classes support is being worked on, but couldn't be on a short way. We want to do it well, not by some minor tricks.

Minor trick ;) lol

I doubt that getting Pascal to talk to C++ classes is a minor trick.

BeOS is still alive. It's just free for personal use now.

Interoperability and linking with gcc has always been a top-priority, and will be, not only for our libs, but also for our users (and dirty script tricks don't help with that). Not only for C, but in the future also for C++

What dirty script tricks? All they did was write some perl so they didn't have to continually hand code C header to Pascal conversions. That must mean that your H2Pas util is a dirty trick too :P

DCC already has C linking.. C++ is a nasty one. I doubt anyone will do it successfully without some very late nights.

Matt

I don't use Linux, and until this morning I've never even heard of Kylix,

Poor you ;)

Matt

An Amiga and ST port is about as usefull as a kick in the head these days.

There's

no Mac port!!!!! There's no PalmOS port (mainly my fault I'll admit :P)

Careful what you say - I still use my Amiga so do many thousands of other people. Just because they dissappear from your local electrical warehouse doesn't mean they've vanished ! ;-)

I've used FPC for nearly a year now and believe me, it's been a life saver. I don't have the sort of money to buy Borland's packages, just for personal use. The fact that they can write a suite of programs such as this, with all the time and effort involved, and give them away for free is fantastic.

I have great faith that FPC (like the Amiga has done) will continue on.... and on..... !! ;-)

Thanks guys, and keep up the excellent work, it is always appreciated.

Andy

Matt Emson wrote

It's going to be a hit. Believe me. It already has thousands of developers.

Actually I doubt it. I'll tell you why.

I am an ardent Delphi and Pascal fan. I wouldn't be involved with FPC and Lazarus if I wasn't. However I am constantly discouraged when looking at Delphi usage by the rest of the world. In a word it isn't used. In fact it goes beyond not used to never heard of. Over the last year I have consulted with several companies and they were large companies and the other members of the companies IT programming staff never even heard of Delphi. They didn't know what it was. When I say it is Pascal their comments were, "Isn't pascal dead?". I have even been told that college professors will not show pascal or talk about pascal because in the collegiate world pascal is considered dead.

I don't like it a great deal but Visual Basic is the choice of a large portion of the developers out in the world. Unfortunately it is because it comes with that major business name "Microsoft" attached. Many of the shirt & ties in the companies want to be sure to use a tool that they think is stable and can be supported. This might be wrong but it is what they think and what Microsoft has managed to instill into the thought processes of these individuals.

The one sure fire way I have of judging the effect of either a hardware platform or a software product is to visit a book store. The growth or popularity of a product can be tied directly to the number of books about the subject in the book store. As the Mac slowly dwindled in sales and popularity the number of books diminished. Today you are lucky to go into a 'Borders' or 'Barnes & Nobles', two of the largest sellers in the U.S., and be able to find books on the Mac. Usually it is relegated to about one shelf on one rack out of about 20-25 racks. The opposite can be seen for Linux itself. Every month more and more shelf space and in fact whole racks are starting to be filled with just Linux books.

Now we look for Delphi books. In Barnes & Noble you are lucky to find one. In fact when I was in there just last week I found one. Yes just one book on Delphi. Other than articles in Linux rags or web sites about Kylix I don't see any major articles about Delphi on Windows. Why? Because very, very few commercial products are built using Delphi. Sad but true.

OK do you want another example? How about jobs! I did a search on DICE using the following keywords: Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, C++.

Here are the hits for the number of jobs with each of those keywords.

Language Jobs
--------------------------
C++ 41,903
Java 33,072
Visual Basic 8,339
Delphi 508

On all of the DICE site there are only 508 jobs that list Delphi in any way shape or form. If that is all the jobs available using Delphi in it's present form in Windows, exactly how many more will possible exist in Linux? I don't see them.

I would like to think that Delphi will continue to exist and that it will knock Visual Basic off of that pedestal that it sits on in the business world, but I am doubtful.

This commentary wasn't in a vain to compare or promote Delphi over FPC. I think they both have a huge place in the world and neither should be tring to replace the other. I just hope that Delphi continues to exist.

Commentary off. :-)

Actually I doubt it. I'll tell you why.

I'm sorry, you don't mention where you're from. I'm guessing the states. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The problem with the US is that it's so fragmented. I'm a Delphi developer, have been for over 3 years, and have never looked back. I have no problem finding new jobs - in fact I get job agencies still hasssling me from CV's I sent out 8 months ago!! The company I work for is a Consultancy and Training organisation
- we make a mint ;) We only do Delphi, Java and a little C++ Builder.

I am an ardent Delphi and Pascal fan. I wouldn't be involved with FPC and Lazarus if I wasn't. However I am constantly discouraged when looking at Delphi usage by the rest of the world.

Did you look beyond your own backyard? Delphi is extremely popular in Europe.

In a word it isn't used.

I certainly get paid a lot for doing nothing then ;)

In fact it goes beyond not used to never heard of.

Only true if the organisation has no real IT department or their IT department isn't on the ball.

I've only ever had to explain what Delphi is to non-programmers. Maybe we're better informed in the UK :P

I have even been told that college professors will not show pascal or talk about pascal because in the collegiate world pascal is considered dead.

Delphi isn't considered Pascal though is it? It's an Object Pascal dialect with a RAD IDE.

VB7 will shake the VB world up. There's no VB for Linux (nor will there ever be until M$ admit Linux is cool.)

I can walk into Borders in Oxford Street, London and find a Mac section. I suppose it depends on where you look ;) Blackwells has a large Mac section as well.

Today you are lucky to go into a 'Borders' or 'Barnes & Nobles', two of the largest sellers in the U.S., and be able to find books on the Mac. Usually it is relegated to about one shelf on one rack out of about 20-25 racks.

Borders in London has abbout the same amount of shelves, and the Mac section is about 3/4 - 1 whole rack.

Linux has about 3 racks.

The opposite can be seen for Linux itself. Every month more and more shelf space and in fact whole racks are starting to be filled with just Linux books.

Multiple titles does not equal quality publication. Much of the Linux badwaggon press is generic and plaguristic.

Now we look for Delphi books. In Barnes & Noble you are lucky to find one. In fact when I was in there just last week I found one. Yes just one book on Delphi.

I'll admit that Delphi books can be a little thin on the ground, but Delphi is the type of anguage where you only need one or two books. Delphi in a Nutshell is all I really refer to.

Other than articles in Linux rags or web sites about Kylix I don't see any major articles about Delphi on Windows. Why?

Because you don't subscribe to Delphi Informant or 'the Delphi Magazine' ? Because you don't read PC Plus (a uk magazine) that has a programming section dedicated to Delphi?? Like I said.. backyard, look further ;)

Because very, very few commercial products are built using Delphi. Sad but true.

Go to the Borland Website. Search for the VCL scanner, and run it on your machine. Then be surprised ;) Microsoft even shipped a version of VB where one of the supporting tools was written in Delphi. Search for 'Delphi' on the web. Search for Delphi on Amazon (.co.uk and .com - results may be different) and also bol.com.

OK do you want another example? How about jobs! I did a search on DICE using the following keywords: Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, C++.

Your search is a little misleading though..

That includes: Unix (linux, aix, hpuk, solaris etc), Visual C++, C++ Builder, Generic Windows, Mac, Vax/VMS, IBM Mainframe.. etc

Java 33,072

Java is a buzzword at the moment, and also the darling language of choice. Of

course there'll be a lot of jobs!!

Visual Basic 8,339

That will incluse VB3, VB4, VB5, VB6, VBA (Access, Word, Excel etc) Ever tried taking a VB6 app and porting it back to VB3?!?! lol.. something you can do with Delphi fairly easily.

Delphi 508

Take a look at

news://forums.inprise.com

there's a forum there called something like 'public.XXX.delphi.jobs'.

On all of the DICE site there are only 508 jobs that list Delphi in any way shape or form. If that is all the jobs available using Delphi in it's present form in Windows, exactly how many more will possible exist in Linux? I don't see them.

508 real jobs, versus 41,000 vapour jobs.. Cool ;)

I would like to think that Delphi will continue to exist and that it will knock Visual Basic off of that pedestal that it sits on in the business world, but I am doubtful.

Just be patient ;)

Matt

The original post was quite lucid and well written, but I think you missed the intent of it. He was merely pointing out what most of us can plainly see; that we're a minority. Like it or not that fact is irrefutable. True, some people seem to follow the masses and use whatever is in vogue, but the numbers are certainly not in our favor. That doesn't make it right or wrong, it's just the way it is.

I happen to love Pascal, and have been programming in it for longer then I'd care to admit, but that doesn't mean everyone else knows how great it is.

Go to the Borland Website. Search for the VCL scanner, and run it on your machine. Then be surprised ;) Microsoft

I tried this and came up with 6 programs and a handful of support files. I have well over 500 executables that run something, be it GUI or command line. That's not good odds...

Jim

But alas, whether we're minority or not, I used to program everything in Pascal. Started with Turbo Pascal 3 on CP/M which was a breaktrough those times, especially that I was an elementary school kid back then and that small bit of `visuality' that they offered was very, very nice. Then I used it on PC, and iterated all the way up to BP7.

Then came Delphi, I tried it and I switched to ADA ;-). Looking from a greater perspective, Delphi can force you to code nicely if you're not a very loose(r) programmer, especially that the framework is very easy to use. But when it comes to stability of the code itself, and the stability of resulting executable, Pascal-alikes are decidedly on the top. There are several C-ish hacks that work in C++ as well (unless you devote your time to read those manpages and turn all the warnings on ;-), and there are simply too many people who use those, and this results in code that will compile on i386 but not with i686 optimizations due to code generator bugs, that will compile on sparc but not on rockwell because one is more `compliant' than the other, and so it goes and goes. Just by looking at the discussion lists and seeing how many build problems vs. useful issues there are raised, C/C++ lists are definitive leaders, and the bias is completely different in Pascal/FPC lists.

The aerospace industry has parts of the code in C/C++ (Hubble ground ops `backend' code as an example), even though ADA or Pascal would be much safer and easier to maintain. Yet it's only because there's abundance of C/C++ programmers out there. I never had any big problems with Pascal code portability. Most of my general-purpose code that wasn't I/O related ports easily across all Pascals, and I never ever had typical C/C++ hassles of cryptic error messages, you-dig-it changes to makefiles in order just to get it to compile, etc. People might not see it, but C/C++'es (both source syntax and compilers themselves) have many very-important-options (read archaisms) that were pretty useful on PDP machines when many users were trying to share what is nowadays present in mid-level pocket calculators, but even CP/M with 64k's of RAM was large enough to allow you to easily write large things in Pascal. I don't know if anybody did any survey about this, but if one would compare the amount of time spent really coding vs. amount of time spent maintaining makefiles and build environment (really a project-unrelated stuff!), Pascal and ADA are definitive leaders and anybody who argues either is blind or is an expert, disciplined script coder and very fast manpage reader (in latter case hats off).

If one tries to discuss whether Delphi is better rad than any C/C++ thingo, there are tons of pro-Delphi arguments. I bet that Delphi (and Pascal and ADA)-using companies really benefit from that by lower costs and by staying on-schedule easier. Sometimes I think that writing a C++ front-end (name it FCC then ;-) to FPC with more strict syntax checking that would disallow C-hacks and integrate C++ into the unit model of Pascal (instead of ugly #includes and .h files) would cost some companies less time than trying to make their makefiles portable ;-).

Have tons of fun, and although I'm only occasionally downloading FPC to look at the progress, the real truth is out there and you're at it ;-))))

Kuba

I personally think that the problem started when Borland released Delphi. They really should have marketed it as a Pascal product - instead of a VB killer.

You're of course right in many ways, but having stated that Delphi probably helped to kill Pascal (once Turbo Pascal become an unsupported product, many Universities moved to C and C++), I would still love to see a 100% Delphi comapatible compiler for multiple systems. My prefference ;) OO rules, pointers suck, and the way Delphi tries to eliminate the ^ and @ makes me very happy. Horses for courses anyway

Matt

I personally think that the problem started when Borland released Delphi. They really should have marketed it as a Pascal product - instead of a VB killer.

You're of course right in many ways, but having stated that Delphi probably helped to kill Pascal (once Turbo Pascal become an unsupported product, many Universities moved to C and C++), I would still love to see a 100% Delphi comapatible compiler for multiple systems. My prefference ;) OO rules, pointers suck, and the way Delphi tries to eliminate the ^ and @ makes me very happy. Horses for courses anyway

Matt