Hi

Maybe I am stupid but I don't know how to download FPC 2.4.2 sources, without using SVN repository.
I am testing on Windows and the default installation package does not contain sources.

Juha

Juha wrote

Maybe I am stupid but I don't know how to download FPC 2.4.2 sources, without using SVN repository.

http://www.freepascal.org/download.var -> Source (under the links to the Binaries)

Jonas

Jonas Maebe kirjoitti tiistai, 10. toukokuuta 2011 01:16:38:

I am trying to load the source on Windows under a VM.

I open http://www.freepascal.org/download.var
-> Source ... it opens:
http://www.freepascal.org/down/source/sources.var
-> SourceForge link ... there Win32 which seems to be the most popular one. Select 2.4.2 -> download fpc-2.4.2.i386-win32.exe

I run the installer. Location = C:\FPC\2.4.2.
First time I used the "Full installation" but now I select "Custom installation". All checkboxes are checked but there is NO source. I don't see the sources in file system either.

I have recommended to some poeople to install FPC release version and then compile Lazarus trunk from source.
In practice the FPC sources are needed for Lazarus. I can imagine how frustrated those people are now.

I noticed there is a new 2.4.4 version available. I will try that also.

Juha

If you want the source, choose "Source" instead of "Win32".

Jonas

Jonas Maebe kirjoitti perjantai, 20. toukokuuta 2011 13:52:22:

If you want the source, choose "Source" instead of "Win32".

Ok, right.... too many links.
Now i realized that all the mirrors give direct links to source packages, only the first SourceForge link has everything included.

The sources could well be included in the default FPC installation package. Most people need them anyway and they don't add much to the package size when compressed. At least everybody working with Lazarus needs the sources ... and most people using FPC also use Lazarus, at least sometimes (?)

Installing and updating both FPC and Lazarus is still a major obstacle for many people. We must improve things to make the first impression smoother.

Juha

That's because in the past, direct sourceforge links were no possible. Now they are possible, but we haven't spent the time yet to update the download links.

The sources could well be included in the default FPC installation package. Most people need them anyway and they don't add much to the package size when compressed.

It depends on the compression that's used. It's 29MB with zip and 25MB with tar.gz. It would increase the download sizes between 30% and 50%, which is not what I would call "not much".

Jonas

"Juha (gmail)" hat am 20. Mai 2011 um 13:07
geschrieben:

Even without Lazarus I think the sources are more useful than some of the units and demos that are installed by default.
 
 

Installing and updating both FPC and Lazarus is still a major obstacle for many people. We must improve things to make the first impression smoother.

For example?

Mattias

Mattias Gaertner kirjoitti perjantai, 20. toukokuuta 2011 15:16:30:

Some strange error pop up like #19289: Error on rebuild

  /usr/lib64/lazarus/ide/lazarus.pp(130,1) Error: Can't call the resource
compiler "/usr/bin/fpcres", switching to external mode

It is a single case, but the forum had many complaints when people updated from 0.9.28 to 0.9.30. Also when people try to compile trunk and they had a release version earlier, they often have problems. A typical one is:
can't find unit xxx needed by unit yyy.

Those people have usually cleaned their file system and deleted local config files. So, updating seems to be a bigger problem than a fresh install.

Juha

What could be the reason for this?
What can be done to help solving this?

There are more than 20 reasons for this. I started a page for this. Feel free to improve the page.
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Unit_not_found_-_How_to_find_units

Lazarus has a test button checking for several misconfigurations and there is a quickfix item. Feel free to improve them.

Those people have usually cleaned their file system and deleted local config files. So, updating seems to be a bigger problem than a fresh install.

Mattias

Mattias Gaertner kirjoitti lauantai, 21. toukokuuta 2011 10:47:44:

I know you have worked on it. I don't even know how to improve it myself.

Anyway, I feel that easy installation and update is the "killer feature" for new people who want to try FPC/Lazarus but don't want to spend much time with it. They move on if they can't easily install.
I have the same feeling with some SW which I can't install easily. I have many other things to test and I move on.

Juha

Huge downloads might be also a killer ;)

They move on if they can't easily install. I have the same feeling with some SW which I can't install easily. I have many other things to test and I move on.

I think beginners always just use the lazarus installer and it works fine. One gets only in trouble when messing with installers and svn sources.

Easy installation and handling is always very important. Otherwise it can become boring very fast, even if one is a technical specialist.

Huge downloads are easy to handle these days.

When trying to update the new lazarus and fpc binaries with deb packages I got in trouble with dependancies. Then I abort it.

It is like Juha said: They move on if they can't easily install.

Rainer Stratmann kirjoitti lauantai, 21. toukokuuta 2011 11:32:46:

True. Most people have fast internet connections. 50 MB is not a problem. The words "fast" and "huge" are relative. In today's standards 50 MB is not huge, it is rather small.
I have a "fast" 1 Mbit/s ADSL connection. I have realized it is not so fast any more. Even a public WLAN can be 50 times faster! Still, it is perfectly enough for me. Some big DVD images take many days to download but it happens in background with torrent p2p.

For the people still using slow modems or lines charged by data, smaller alternative packets can be made of course.

When trying to update the new lazarus and fpc binaries with deb packages I got in trouble with dependancies. Then I abort it.

Yes. Based on forum posts updating causes more problems, also when updating between releases, not only when compiling from svn sources.

Juha

[...] > When trying to update the new lazarus and fpc binaries with deb packages I > got in trouble with dependancies. Then I abort it.

What troubles?

Yes. Based on forum posts updating causes more problems, also when updating between releases, not only when compiling from svn sources.

What problems?

Please name a specific problem, so we can discuss a solution.

Mattias

The thing I have never understood is why it split into a myriad of different .deb files while it really only needs to be the following:

* lazarus.deb
* fpc.deb
* fpc-source.deb

and maybe even alternatively for lazy people like me something like

* lazarus-complete.deb (provides: lazarus, fpc, fpc-source)

I'm not sure about the exact entries in the deb control files (provides, depends, replaces, etc.) to achieve this magic but I think it should be possible, shouldn't it?

Bernd

Mattias Gaertner kirjoitti lauantai, 21. toukokuuta 2011 12:29:34:

Most of them got solved somehow, or maybe the people got fed up and stopped asking. "can't find unit xxx needed by unit yyy" is a typical one. The posts can be searched from forum, I will see if I have time.

Juha

For userfriednly reasons it would be the best that there are less or no dependencies.
It is for userfriendly reasons better to overwrite all config files and have a working solution than to fight with the huge dependencies.

Bernd _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal

<aten/fpc/lazarus-9.0.30/lcl-units-0.9.30_0.9.30-0_i386.deb' ;echo RESULT=$? Wähle vormals abgewähltes Paket lcl-units-0.9.30. (Lese Datenbank ... 159373 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Entpacke lcl-units-0.9.30 (aus .../lcl-units-0.9.30_0.9.30-0_i386.deb) ... dpkg: Abhängigkeitsprobleme verhindern Konfiguration von lcl-units-0.9.30: lcl-units-0.9.30 hängt ab von lcl-gtk2-0.9.30 (= 0.9.30-0) | lcl-gtk-0.9.30 (= 0.9.30-0) | lcl-qt-0.9.30 (= 0.9.30-0); aber:
Paket lcl-gtk2-0.9.30 ist nicht installiert.
Paket lcl-gtk-0.9.30 ist nicht installiert.
Paket lcl-qt-0.9.30 ist nicht installiert.
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von lcl-units-0.9.30 (--install): Abhängigkeitsprobleme - lasse es unkonfiguriert
Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:
lcl-units-0.9.30
RESULT=1

<aten/fpc/lazarus-9.0.30/lcl-qt4-0.9.30_0.9.30-0_i386.deb' ;echo RESULT=$? Wähle vormals abgewähltes Paket lcl-qt4-0.9.30.
(Lese Datenbank ... 161332 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Entpacke lcl-qt4-0.9.30 (aus .../lcl-qt4-0.9.30_0.9.30-0_i386.deb) ... dpkg: Abhängigkeitsprobleme verhindern Konfiguration von lcl-qt4-0.9.30: lcl-qt4-0.9.30 hängt ab von libqt4pas-dev; aber:
Paket libqt4pas-dev ist nicht installiert.
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von lcl-qt4-0.9.30 (--install): Abhängigkeitsprobleme - lasse es unkonfiguriert
Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:
lcl-qt4-0.9.30
RESULT=1

Mattias _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal

Because of Debian policies.
The deb package are made for the repositories, so the number of packages are irrelevant. You install one and automatically get all needed.

Theoretically we could provide an extra set of deb packages (or maybe just one). But they will bite the standard ones, so this opens another can of worms.

I'm not sure about the exact entries in the deb control files (provides, depends, replaces, etc.) to achieve this magic but I think it should be possible, shouldn't it?

Yes, but it is continuous work. I doubt that the debian package maintainers will do it.

Mattias

They are typical dpkg messages. This is pretty normal when installing deb packages manually. That is not specific to Lazarus or FPC. The problem is that the tar contains *all* packages, but normally you don't want to install all of them. A README.txt would help. For example:
If you want to install the gtk2 version of Lazarus use: dpkg -i foogtk.deb bar.deb etc.deb
If you want to install the qt version of Lazarus use: dpkg -i fooqt.deb bar.deb etc.deb

Mattias

Mattias Gaertner wrote

> The thing I have never understood is why it split into a myriad of > different .deb files Because of Debian policies.

There exists a debian policy to split a large package into some randomly chosen smaller ones although *none* of them can ever be used individually without *all* others?

I didn't know this. The only policy I know of is that there is a convention to separate packages for binary and source (and headers if C/C++) and even is not generally applicable to all programming languages.

I would just make one binary package and one source package and ignore the affectivities of the debian bureaucrats and let them split it on their own if they so desperately want to split things for no reason that have always belonged together. I promise: They wont. They will take the package as it is. Don't ever let your productivity be hindered by some crazy Debian bureaucrats, don't let them dictate you how to architect your own software, don't waste any valuable time trying to fulfill their crazy unreasonable wishes. Just ignore them. Don't listen to them when they are trying to educate you about your own software, they have no clue about it. Do what makes sense and ignore everything that has no other reason than pure bureaucracy. They will bow (rather sooner than later) because they simply have no other choice and either do the work themselves or (more likely) simply take the package more or less as it is.

Bernd

On 21.05.2011 12:21, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
A README.txt would

help. For example: If you want to install the gtk2 version of Lazarus use:

A shell script that installs them in the correct order.

Bernd Kreuss wrote

There exists a debian policy to split a large package into some randomly chosen smaller ones although *none* of them can ever be used individually without *all* others?

It's not true that none of them can be used without all others. And afaik the main reason for the split is because of dependencies. They don't want to force everyone to install firebird, mysql, postgresql, ptcgraph, gtk, gtk2, qt and every other single thing for which FPC has bindings. On the other hand, they want to ensure that when someone installs those FPC bindings, that the package these bindings are for also gets installed.

Jonas

dpkg will order them for you. Just pass all needed behind the -i.

Mattias

I downloaded from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Linux%20i386%20DEB/Lazarus%200.9.30/ And I can not see such packages you mentioned.
When type in for example:
dpkg -i fooqt.deb bar.deb etc.deb
there are still messages

debian:/home/rainer/daten/fpc/lazarus-9.0.30# dpkg -i fooqt.deb bar.deb stc.deb
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von fooqt.deb (--install): Kann auf das Archiv nicht zugreifen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von bar.deb (--install): Kann auf das Archiv nicht zugreifen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von stc.deb (--install): Kann auf das Archiv nicht zugreifen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:
fooqt.deb
bar.deb
stc.deb

Mattias _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal

*ouch* That hurt.

You owe my parents a new table now. I broke it when my head made contact with it.

Of course, there are no "foo", "bar", or "etc" packages. Those are exemplary names.

Vinzent.

Tz, tz, tz...

...so your head is not strong enough...

Of course, there are no "foo", "bar", or "etc" packages. Those are exemplary names.

That does not help me to fix the problem of installing the packages rather it makes it more complicated.

You owe my parents a new table now. I broke it when my head made contact with it.

...or you head is too strong...

Jonas Maebe wrote

They don't want to force everyone to install firebird, mysql, postgresql, ptcgraph, gtk, gtk2, qt and every other single thing for which FPC has bindings.

"force" is the keyword here. The entire following rant refers to only this one word:

Its not their [Debian] business to find non-solutions for these non-problems, I would just ignore this.

They are first making up a non-existing problem (people being "forced" to do something they allegedly don't want, although we all know the opposite is true and people *always* want a complete and painless install to avoid all sorts of problems) and then they are presenting the non-solution to this non-problem: Do a lot of work to split things that always belonged together while creating a lot of new problems and dependency hell nobody has asked for and nobody ever wanted.

Just ignore what they [Debian] want. It is not relevant what they believe (or guess) what your users might want. Don't let them damage the usability and the reputation by listening to them and wasting time solving their fantasy problems while this is leading to the creation new and very real problems. The sheer existence of this thread (and other threads like this and many more) is testifying this.

The Debian maintainers have no expertise in judging what the users of a given software really *want*, especially if they don't use it themselves. Simply ignore them. Their opinion does not matter. They will accept the big package. Don't bow to them, they want something from you, not the other way around!

The windows installer of Lazarus clearly shows how usability looks like. This is what users want! There is no reason why this should not be possible on Debian also. If Debian policies (or like in this case not even the written policies themselves but only the beliefs of some overzealous Debian maintainers) are the only thing preventing usability from coming true then to hell with them.

Bernd

...
The rules may have reasons for managing the debian project.

To be independent is more work in the beginning.
But then you have all liberties.
I like to be independent, so I wrote my own webserver (http://demo.klimaregelung.de) instead of relying to other packages. And also an own (very simple) PNG image converter from plain bitmap data. ...

The windows installer of Lazarus clearly shows how usability looks like. This is what users want! There is no reason why this should not be possible on Debian also. If Debian policies ...

I think this would be also possible for Linux.
One big file (in these days easy to handle) and then install everything (memory is also enough these days). May be with a choice for the packages.

Are you being serious about literally doing 'dgpk -i fooqt.deb'? Maybe I'm not reading you correctly.

Anway, having just set up fpc and lazarus snapshots under Ubuntu 11.04 (and since we obviously all want everything always), this is how you might succeed:

1. Unpack the Snapshot .deb.tar to whatever/
2. sudo dpkg -R -i whatever/
3. If there are complaints about missing dependencies, open Synaptics afterwards, do "Fix broken packages" -> "Apply" and, normally, you should be fine.

I also noticed that the Lazarus i386-deb Link on the Snapshot page leads to a package that gives you "LCLBase not found" (or similar) errors.

I used this package, which worked, and which also has a more recent date:

ftp://ftp.hu.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/snapshots/lazarus-0.9.30.1.30409-20110510.i386.deb.tar

Regards
Roland

Which part of Jonas' email did you not understand? I don't want KDE pulled in when I'm on Gnome (and vice versa). It's a real problem with a real solution.

When you install from deb files (outside the repo), then packages will be marked as broken and you can use apt-get -f install to solve the dependencies from your own repo. Very easy if you bother to rtfm.

The correct and best way is to use a repo that contains your packages and add it to your sources.list.

Nope, this thread was started because Juha contracted temporary blindness and couldn't find the fpc source package on sourgeforge. The deb issue was brought up by Rainer.

No, they won't accept a big package, since that would be bad engineering and inflexible. And no, they don't want something from you, otherwise they will come and get it. They seem to be quite good at judging what I want.

The windows installer of Lazarus clearly shows how usability looks like. This is what users want! There is no reason why this should not be

Haha, the lazarus installer installs fpc and a bunch of mingw/cygwin tools inside the lazarus installation. This is definitely not what I want, since I've already got my own installations of fpc and mingw. But this is a Windows solution to a Windows problem: the real dependency hell.

Henry

Bernd Kreuss wrote

They are first making up a non-existing problem (people being "forced" to do something they allegedly don't want, although we all know the opposite is true and people *always* want a complete and painless install to avoid all sorts of problems) and then they are presenting the

I can refute your point about people always wanting complete installs by simply referring to myself. How do you know what all users of FPC/Laz always want?

Debian (and its derivates, to varying degrees) has one big advantage, viz. its consistent and disciplined package management. I don't see how giving a damn about their good practices and policies would help to promote a comparatively small project.

I don't see the problem. FPC/Laz users get what they want on Debian etc. It's just a matter of how you get it.

And once again, I want to stress that statements like "Their opinion does not matter." are not only not helpful, but I guess also wrong in the sense that it does very much matter.

I'm not going to refute those universal statements again. The only thing I can think of that would be a (rather insignificant) usability improvement for Debian packages would be to have a repository for daily FPC/Laz snapshots. Otherwise things have always been fine for me.

Best
Roland

.
.

I won't argue to your statements (which are already properly covered by others, e.g. the response from Jonas above) and I'll simply stick to your proposed keyword. Who forces you to use Debian packages (which are obviously compiled according to rules defined by Debian) instead of using a big .tar.gz or some other solution? Who forces you to use Debian (or Debian based) distribution at all even (there are other distributions with slightly different rules)? If you want to focus existing problems (which had been the original topic of this thread) then let's discuss concrete issues (i.e. what does not work, why and how to improve the situation for the future). If you want to discuss philosophical points regarding packaging rules of various Linux distributions, I suggest moving to fpc-other.

Tomas