Noting that Graeme is hammering on about expunging GTK1 support, and noting that it's convenient to be able to compile against at least two widget sets for test purposes, what are the options for Linux?

If I try to build for Qt I always end up with messages about a missing qt4pas library: what is this and where am I supposed to get it?

If I look at the fpgui state on
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Roadmap it states quite flatly that most controls aren't implemented. I can accept that they might not have all the facilities required to build the IDE, but with the best will in the world that gives me very little incentive to even try building one of my own projects using it.

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Qt_Interface

Someone was working on the fpgui interface recently, iirc, but it's still in very early stages. This page is probably not up to date, though, as with a lot of the wiki pages.

Henry

libQt4Pas can be downloaded from:
http://users.telenet.be/Jan.Van.hijfte/qtforfpc/fpcqt4.html

wiki about Qt interface:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Qt_Interface

zeljko

Henry Vermaak wrote

> If I try to build for Qt I always end up with messages about a missing > qt4pas library: what is this and where am I supposed to get it? http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Qt_Interface

Thanks Henry, I'll see what I can do with that later in the day.

Thanks Zeljko, I see there's a Debian package for it as well- I might try that first.

Henry Vermaak wrote

Someone was working on the fpgui interface recently, iirc, but it's still in very early stages. This page is probably not up to date, though, as with a lot of the wiki pages.

Has anybody found it usable? I'm very much in favour of the concept but I'm concerned about the amount of work I'd have to do working around quirks- I'm already finding GTK 1+2 fairly heavy going not to mention things like varying dpi on different output devices.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

If I try to build for Qt I always end up with messages about a missing qt4pas library: what is this and where am I supposed to get it?

I also always seem to struggle building LCL-Qt and then have to end up downloading 100+ MB of packages to get it to work - something I hate doing after a nice clean Ubuntu install.

If I look at the fpgui state on http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Roadmap

I think that page might be outdated at the moment. Recently there was work done on LCL-fpGUI and was told most components can now be placed on forms and compile/run. But that obviously doesn't mean it's ready for run your programs with.

So if you don't want to move to LCL-GTK2, then your only other option under Linux is to use LCL-Qt at this moment in time. Or use fpGUI directly and not via LCL - but I know this will mean lots of work to most developers here, so not really an option.

I don't think the fpgui lcl interface is complete enough to consider porting applications over. What problems are you having with gtk2?

Henry

It probably pulls in all the qt libs. The default Ubuntu install isn't what I'd call clean, though. I tend to install a clean console only Debian testing, then I install the gnome-core package, which gives you a nice minimal Gnome system to build on.

Henry

Hello Lazarus-List,

Thursday, June 3, 2010, 2:22:47 PM, you wrote:

GG> I think that page might be outdated at the moment. Recently there was GG> work done on LCL-fpGUI and was told most components can now be placed GG> on forms and compile/run. But that obviously doesn't mean it's ready

Standard tab components only. Other tabs are in progress.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I also always seem to struggle building LCL-Qt and then have to end up downloading 100+ MB of packages to get it to work - something I hate doing after a nice clean Ubuntu install.

I can sympathise with that. Apart from anything else people "of a certain age" see 100Mb as an obscene amount of data- hell, I was running a university lab at one point with a 5Mb disc for the undergraduates and 10Mb for researchers :-)

With Debian- and this also works for Ubuntu- I use a startup script that logs the list of currently-installed packages into RCS. It's primitive, for example it doesn't distinguish between packages which have been manually installed and their prerequisites, but at least it gives me a record of what's on any given system.

Hi

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I also always seem to struggle building LCL-Qt and then have to end up downloading 100+ MB of packages to get it to work - something I hate doing after a nice clean Ubuntu install.

For me it is the other way around. I had to install many GTK related devel packages for my KDE based OpenSuse Linux before I could build LCL-GTK2. LCL-Qt required only qt4pas.

At least some time ago LCL-Qt was more stable than LCL-GTK2. Recently I haven't even tested LCL-GTK2 so I don't know how much it has improved.

Juha

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

Noting that Graeme is hammering on about expunging GTK1 support, and noting that it's convenient to be able to compile against at least two widget sets for test purposes, what are the options for Linux?

Do what I do, compile against GTK2 and Win32, then test under WINE. Aside from TImages being displayed upside-down (a WINE bug), it works great.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

I can sympathise with that. Apart from anything else people "of a certain age" see 100Mb as an obscene amount of data

Normally I would not have complained about a 100MB download - well one shouldn't need to in this day and age with fast internet. But unfortunately in South Africa the consumers get screwed left and right. I pay ridiculous amounts for 500MB of data that expire in 30 days - they (telecoms companies) are very optimistic to think 500MB will last 30 days.

Before, when I ran ran both at work and home on a 32bit Ubuntu, it was nice. I downloaded packages at work, used Apt-on-CD to create a repository on a disk - I could then install at home without problems or internet downloads required. Unfortunately I now run 64-bit at work and 32-bit at home. :-/ Time for a home upgrade I guess. :)

Off-topic, but some rural workers in the UK use http://www.beyondsl.net/ which looks attractive.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

So if you don't want to move to LCL-GTK2, then your only other option under Linux is to use LCL-Qt at this moment in time. Or use fpGUI directly and not via LCL - but I know this will mean lots of work to most developers here, so not really an option.

as the maintainer of fpGUI, you (and your co-workers) use fpGUI directly in your projects, right?

Yes, for all our projects. To prevent possible confusion, what I meant by my statement quoted above, is that if you used LCL in a project, switching that project to fpGUI (or any other toolkit) will be a lot of work. But using fpGUI from the start is not an issue or difficult - it's similar enough to VCL/LCL so should be easy to learn.

I don't think I'm going to get it working without butchery. Debian stable ("Lenny") includes Qt 4.4.3 which is definitely to old for Qt4Pas (v2.1)- error message during compilation followed by much grue. Qt4intf v1.72 might possibly be better but I'd need to regress to Lazarus older than 21913, unless there's magic to tell the current revision to use the old library name.

I'm rather reluctant to try loading newer versions of the Qt library- this machine might be needed for business-critical stuff at short notice and I really don't want to break anything.

For the moment that leaves me stuck with GTK 1+2. I might possibly port the project to Windows at some point but that would mean rewriting serial comms stuff... easy enough but not this week.

thanks... that was my understanding...

the reason i asked the (devil's advocate?) question was so that others who may have missed your past responses concerning fpGUI or who may have just recently joined us would now have the same info concerning fpGUI ;)

Qt libs aren't 100MB. All you need is qt,qt-x11 and maybe phonon (suse) (pkg names from fedora). All of them are max 25MB.Of course if you need debuginfo pkgs then it raises download to 70-80 MB.
If you download complete SDK from nokia site then it's > 100MB. zeljko

zeljko wrote

Qt libs aren't 100MB. All you need is qt,qt-x11 and maybe phonon (suse) (pkg names from fedora). All of them are max 25MB.

Actually I reported some time ago that there is a problem with libQt4Pascal (is that the current name of the binding library?). It adds bindings to lot's of Qt4 packages, even while the LCL doesn't use most of them, so yes, we are currently hard-coded into uses lot's of packages from Qt.

Works nicely with the libqt4pas-dev available for Debian 6.0 "Squeeze".