From: "Jonas Maebe"

FPC and Lazarus are currently not sutable as a main tool RAD (at least on Winodows). If you have Delphi (7) Studio licensed RAD and developing commercial applications, you have seen real RAD tool in action:

Advantage of Delphi:

1. User friendly IDE
2. Dynamicaly using components from IDE
3. Incorporated debugger (requre no currently large executable with symbols)
4. Optimized building performace

Advantage of FPC and Lazarus:

1. Daily updates and upgrades
2. Cross platform support
3. Code optimization for targeted processor (main delphi disadvantage on Intel compatible processors)
4. Easier (C like) pointer manipulation
5. C like operators support

Code translation problem (Delphi to Lazarus):

1. Rudimentar files translation - require too many manul changes on each file to change basic units and resources
2. Code incompatibilty in some cases (one of it is #4922)
3. Basic component incompatibility
4. Unclear/unsoported full Unicode (UTF-16) component support

It is far from that however, that Delphi is bugfree product, but currently regarding translation problems, disadvantage of Lazarus IDE and some incomaptibility/bugs in both, these advantages are not enough to set FPC and Lazarus as a main RAD, at least on Windows which is still the most used OS for global puposes.

... "for my/your environment and purpose". And being honest: Windows is only one of FPC's targets and considering the OSes used by most current developers Windows is only a minor target for FPC and Lazarus :)

[cut]

While I don't argue with your position, In defence of FPC/Lazarus:

Like with all open source projects, it is: You get what you pay for.

Everyone is free to invest some time in making FPC/Lazarus a good alternative. With a core development team of at most 10 people, doing this in their spare time, I guess you'll have to be patient...

Michael.

Sasa Zeman wrote

FPC and Lazarus are currently not sutable as a main tool RAD (at least on Winodows). If you have Delphi (7) Studio licensed RAD and developing commercial applications, you have seen real RAD tool in action:

That depends on the environment and purpose.

Disadvantages of Delphi:
1. You neither know nor can influence the companies policies.
2. It's closed source, if it's buggy you're lost.
3. Insecure future!

6. Runs on machines with relatively low memory, compared to D7 (e.g. 256MB for development, 64MB on target here)
7. Saves you a huge amount of licence costs.
8. Has a mailing lists with a lot of funny people to talk to.

SCNR,
Marc

Sasa Zeman wrote

FPC and Lazarus are currently not sutable as a main tool RAD (at least on Winodows). If you have Delphi (7) Studio licensed RAD and developing commercial applications, you have seen real RAD tool in action:

Please do not come all the way here just to tell us that Lazarus is not suitable as a RAD tool. This is typical Troll behavior.

If you don't like the way things are on Lazarus/Free Pascal now, you can either:

* Submit a patch to fix it

* Pay someone to do it

* Wait until someone else does it

Please do not come all the way here just to tell us that Lazarus is not suitable as a RAD tool. This is typical Troll behavior.

You people are really odd... Please do not mis-interprete.

I spend most of my spare time and money to test FPC and Lazarus, post more than several bug reports and suggestions on Lazarus mantis and FPC bug page to contribute in effort to make it bugfree and better product.

When you read all posts and bug reports on Lazarus mantis, you will know that this is a message which point differences need to be improved IMO to put FPC/Lazarus near to Delphi/Kylix functionality.

Disadvantages of Delphi: 2. It's closed source, if it's buggy you're lost.

Main problems comes from RTL and VCL, not a compiler - it is stable, at least for D7. As D7 Pro+ comes with RTL and VCL sources, it is easy to fix and recompile both. And there is many excelent free and OpenSource third-party components available.

D7 IDE however is only problematic for non-English users (regarding saving it's own translations codes in .DFM when developing applications and using executables on different localized machines).

6. Runs on machines with relatively low memory, compared to D7 (e.g. 256MB for development, 64MB on target here)

D7 run IDE under 128MB and work without resource problems with any project complexity or number of added components.

7. Saves you a huge amount of licence costs.

Buying Delphi Studio 7 Pro was good investion so far. As the future is unknown for now, serching alternative in FPC and Lazarus.

8. Has a mailing lists with a lot of funny people to talk to.

(As well taking banal insults...)

Even not directly provided personal support, Borland have excellent suppors from newsgroups (Delphi users and TeamB people).

Sasa Zeman wrote

> Please do not come all the way here just to tell us that Lazarus is > not suitable as a RAD tool. This is typical Troll behavior. You people are really odd... Please do not mis-interprete.

Then, what was your objective in starting this thread??

This thread almost certainly won't give any contribution to improve Lazarus or Free Pascal.

You cannot just come here, say: Ah, Delphi is better. What will happen to a post like this?? People will start defending Free Pascal, other criticising it and this is where the post will become a typical troll thread.

If you really want to make Free Pascal / Lazarus better you should go with specific topics, and discuss what would be a solution to improve each small parts where you consider Delphi to be better then Lazarus.

For this *you need to be willing to help!!!*

On Open Source the developer is King. You cannot just come here and expect that your priorities are the priorities of the developers. There just are not.

If you do not want to use your time to study specific technical details or submit patches then one of the things bellow might happen:

* You won't help

* You can pay someone else to do this work for you

Hi,

I think that we all agree now and we should close that thread.

Alain

If you really want to make Free Pascal / Lazarus better you should go with specific topics, and discuss what would be a solution to improve each small parts where you consider Delphi to be better then Lazarus.

That is exactly almost literally counted in the first message of the thread. Taking counted advantages and incorporate it in FPC/Lazarus will possible improve the project. I'm unable to wrote simpler words on English if it is not obvious already.

Good luck in further development.

I would personally pay $50-$200 for a FPC compiler myself, if it came with sources to RTL/VCL and didn't even include lazarus. If it came with compiler sources too, that would be a bonus. I would also buy FPC t-shirts to support the team.

Problem is then how do you split the money? Which person is pulling more weight than the other and gets a better salary? This is the problem with business: it's unfair and requires accountants, lawyers, etc.
Then get all sorts of emails on the mailing list from FPC-DEVEL team telling about how their shareholders are more important than developers. So it's not really greener grass on the other side.

Sometimes - but I find they are also full of loonies who keep talking about shareholders, and the latest stock price of Borland, and why it is wrong to use any open source software (even though the VCL itself is open source, after you pay for a copy of Delphi it is truly an open source variant (not GPL but still opened up source code).

PS. I hoped that this thread will die and I will not waste my time, but it is alive and I can't hold myself and do write an answer.

To be on topic, I just want to share my thoughts (they do probably differ from yours), ended with not choosing Lazarus (but I trace its development a little). I am newbie developer with some freedom in choosing tools:

1. Lazarus is meant to be like Delphi (or better).
2. But there is no word Rapid in transforming Delphi project (the last try was with Lazarus v0.9.14 or something).
3. There is nothing Rapid in docs: classes are not really Delphi compatible and are not provided with clear explicit help.
4. Sometimes Delphi suck too, but there are many sites with code examples etc. The MOST of them are not directly supported by Borland, if I get it right.
5. Word Rapid again: changing sources written by other people or waiting for support when some rewriting is required is bad option.
6. At some time I didn't find in distribution any Lazarus example with, e.g. labels with different font sizes.
7. I was pointed in these lists that TTrayIcon is very important new class in Lazarus. I was not excited: under windows I can implement needed features by windows API and I don't need other OSes.

So, for me better help or code examples are crucial when Developing an Application Rapid.

If Delphi were not popular long ago, nowadays there would be fewer sites/code examples and I'd probably write interfaces in assembler or visual basic:)