I was able to get my Xubuntu 15.10 into a state where FPC doesn't work even if I remove and install again from repo.
I tried installing FPC 3RC1 but then removed all traces of it. At one point there were links to /etc/alternative created by the Ubuntu package system. After removing everything and then installing FPC 3 using the sh script, there is no fpc.cfg generated. Why not?

Strangely I have earlier managed to install FPC 3RC1 without problems in other systems. This is embarrassing. I was planning to use Xubuntu for a while now.

Juha

Hello Juha,

Juha Manninen wrote

I was able to get my Xubuntu 15.10 into a state where FPC doesn't work even if I remove and install again from repo.

Like I told many before, stop using package managers to install FPC - use the official FPC download and installer instead. I've used it for the last 5 years and it always works everywhere, and you don't need root access. I never had a single problem.

Regards,
- Graeme -

fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/

My public PGP key: http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp

In our previous episode, Juha Manninen said:

Did you install as root ? The sh script iirc only installs fpc.cfg in global dirs as root and otherwise locally as ~/.fpc.cfg

Marco van de Voort wrote

Did you install as root ? The sh script iirc only installs fpc.cfg in global dirs as root and otherwise locally as ~/.fpc.cfg

Oops, I found the error. I had installed the 32-bit version of FPC 3RC1. "Free Pascal Compiler version 3.0.0rc1 [2015/08/20] for i386" I should not tweak my OS when I am tired.

Interestingly the compiler ran although it didn't work well without fpc.cfg, but "fpcmkcfg" did not told the file or directory does not exist while it certainly was there. Even "which fpcmkcfg" showed its location.
Anyway, on a 64-bit Linux you cannot run all 32-bit programs like you can on Windows.
Now I have installed the 64-bit version. I can see /etc/fpc.cfg and everything works again. Happy end!

The Ubuntu package manager behavior remains a mystery. I thought the system is clean of FPC packages but reinstalling them still created broken links to /etc/alternative.
In this matter I must agree with Graeme, the package manager tried to be too smart.

Otherwise Xubuntu is rock-solid. I used Manjaro for a while. It is also very good and the package system is better than in Ubuntu. However it is a rolling on-the-edge distro and I got problems, partly because I experimented too much.
Also the KDE 5 Plasma was not stable enough yet.
I will return to Manjaro later but now I want to do something else than tweak my OS.

Juha

Seems related:
I need to do an install of Lazarus + FPC on RaspberryPi2 with Raspbian Jessie.
Is the recommended method to do as you describe above also there? Or is Lazarus itself going to correctly install FPC too? (Will ask about Lazarus install on the Lazarus list)

Bo Berglund wrote

I need to do an install of Lazarus + FPC on RaspberryPi2 with Raspbian Jessie.

It's been a while since I installed FPC on my RPi, but yes, I would follow the same guidelines as I mentioned for Desktop installs.

Regards,
- Graeme -

On PCs, Jessie doesn't appear to have too many surprises in it compared with earlier versions. I'm much too busy to have tried it on an RPi yet.

The major "gotcha" is that you can't (by default) SSH into it as root, which causes problems if you need to run a GUI (i.e. not just console I/O) program as root with the X11 stuff passing over the SSH connection.