Ok,
we had a Skype phone+chat session with my friend again trying to install Lazarus, this time on a Windows XP laptop. I thought it must be an easy task and we are done quickly. I was wrong again!

He managed to install Lazarus by himself. So yes, it is easy to install but read on... First he made a directory for my program under C:\. Then he opened the project with Lazarus. Everything looked good. Then he clicked "Run" button --> "cannot write to directory lib" ... or something. Apparently he did't have enough rights for the folder. But now, why was he able to create the folder through "My Computer" if he has no rights for it? I just don't know Windows enough to understand it.

Then he made an empty test project and saved it under the user's default directory and tried to run it. There was an error about executing ppc or something. Then we both were so pissed off that we closed the Skype session. F**k!

Before that we were fighting with zip packages. The Windows machine didn't have a zip program installed. I made a mistake first and recommended Peazip "because it is made with Lazarus". My friend installed it but the UI is so weird that he couldn't use it. Finally he installed a decent archiver, jzip, and could extract my source package.

Why this Lazarus must be such a weirdo-land? The only known program made with Lazarus, excluding Lazarus itself, is Peazip and it is so weird that a "normal" person can't use it.
The installation of FPC + Lazarus fails on 2 major platforms: Windows and OSX (again for a "normal" person). I would say a mainstream Linux distro is the only place where is actually works "for sure" (after one manages to install the distro I mean).

Now I have read many comments that Lazarus Windows installer is a really easy one-click system. I admit that the installation is easy but the result was a broken system so it doesn't help much.
How do you people explain this episode with the "idiot proof" Windows installer? Do you think I made up the story. No, it really happened to a real person, on a real Windows XP laptop and I really tried to help him through a Skype session.
And yes, he has been able to install other SW when he wanted.

His feeling is of course "why do you give me this crappy SW. Is it some kind of joke?". I would have the same feeling if someone handed me a program I can't even install. I can myself be very irritated sometimes when a system doesn't work while it should.

I think I must learn GUI programming with Java and port the code. Java is already installed on those machines and runs for sure. The other choise is to boot Windows XP on my mini-laptop, install Lazarus there and build the program, then send the binary to my friend. He lives 250 km away and I don't drive there now.

Write once, compile everywhere. Right yeah...

Juha
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2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say what I think is the obvious. If installing software on a computer is hard - writing software for said computer is going to be even harder.

Perhaps the person you are working with could pay you money to develop the application instead of dragging this ON and ON. If getting the Lazarus packaged version installed is this challenging perhaps expecting said user to write software with Lazarus is going to be - impossible?

Software development requires a basic understanding of how computers work...

I've had my problems with particular issues but the write once compile everywhere works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. What more can someone ask for w/o using interpreted stuff? You can't expect Lazarus to write the software too once you get it installed. ;-)

That being said - perhaps you downloaded a specific version w/o the FPC binaries.

If you really think it is a permission problem, why do you blame this on Lazarus, when you should be complaining to Microsoft ?

And if peazip has a weird interface, again: why blame this on Lazarus ? You should contact the peazip maintainer and complain to him; Lazarus does not enforce a particular interface.

I've installed Lazarus on many windows PC's, including Vista (with all it's strange security settings) and I never had any problems. And this was with the vanilla installer, no special tricks.

I fully understand that such things are frustrating, but I hardly think it is fair to blame these experiences on Lazarus.

If you want, I can show you similar problems as you experience with just about any program on windows. They are not hard to reproduce.

Michael.

2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

Yawn. Nobody will help you if you don't give specific errors/screenshots. Also, take your peazip complaints somewhere else.

If you can't even manage to install it, how will you be able to program useful software?

2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

Please, provide more accurate information:
* Lazarus/FPC version being installed.
* exact error messages
* where the Lazarus was installed. (it feels like project's working directories contained spaces and/or nont Ansi chars)

I could also help your friend getting Lazarus work on both Win and OSX via skype.

...I think I must learn GUI programming with Java and port the code. Java is already installed on those machines and runs for sure....

You're right: Java, C++, C#, Delphi or whatever else is solution :)

thanks,
abnormal dmitry

....

I admit that the installation is easy but the result was a broken system so it doesn't help much.

So it isn't about the installer => it is about the space-in-path problem (which caused the permission issue, because he couldn't use the "normal" location , in his user directory/

Anyway let me start a bit different => I first used Lazarus maybe 2 or 3 years back => never encountered any of those issues (but I do today know they exist, and I do not deny them).

But why is that I didn't encounter them?

- Well first of all: Long before I ever heard of Lazarus, I started to use windows only as Admin user. Because when ever I tried otherwise It wouldn't be a week, until I run into some issue, that was cause by not being admin.
In a corporate environment, where you use no more than 3 or 4 fixed applications, and where the company admin comes by every no and then, logs in as admin, and updates your system => you the user can work as user. At home, where I must admin my system myself => that just doesn't cut it. -2nd since it is a single user system, I always create my c:\data folder and thats where I work. It's too long back, I don't know when and why I stopped using the user dir.

So yes, I am not your average user, but windows got me there, long before I knew Lazarus. So I cant blame Lazarus for the problems I have with windows...

Anyway, as I said the problem is caused by the space-in-path issue, solve this, then we can use C:program files./lazarus (even with the current installer), and then the problem is gone.

I remember there wher mail-threads about that, and why it wasn't that easy, and all that => but it's to long back, I don't know the details anymore.

Repeating your quote:

I admit that the installation is easy but the result was a broken system so it doesn't help much.

How to you fix this with a different installer, that creates the same broken result?

Martin

2010/7/29 Andrew Brunner

You understood the situation little wrong. He is not planning to write SW, he only wants to build and run the program I made, on his platform (OSX) which is different from mine (Linux).
Remember the ad: Write once, compile everywhere.

Perhaps the person you are working with could pay you money to develop

Actually it is me pushing this Lazarus thing for him. He asked me earlier if a computer program could solve his problem. I became interested and promised to write a small prog. I really thought Lazarus was a good idea because he could build a Mac version with it. Later the Windows laptop was just a rescue plan when everything failed.
I am not going to ask money from him, this is more a question of pride now. I don't want to push crap to anyone.

Software development requires a basic understanding of how computers work...

I understand that. Still, Lazarus should be easy to install also for people who don't program themselves!
In a sense it is comparable to Java if the purpose really is to compile existing code for other platforms.

I really don't know what went wrong. The fact is however that something went wrong for a person who can install most other SW. It means the installation is not as easy as it should be.

BTW, do you think my idea of compiling a program using Lazarus by a non-programmer is a stupid idea? I honestly thought it was a cool idea. But, maybe Lazarus should be touched only by programmers and it kind of justifies the difficult installation. It works as an intelligence test. If you can't install it, you are too stupid to program.

Juha
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... By programmers, of course.

The intended audience for Lazarus is strictly programmers.

I doubt I could explain how to install (let alone use) Delphi, VB , Access or whatever to my wife or child, even though they use a computer daily :-)

Michael.

Hi Juha,

2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

AFAIK, WinXP has a zip program, look: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306531

Always I installed Lazarus on Windows (just for tests or showing somebody) I used the installer and never I found any error (always in Win XP).

His feeling is of course "why do you give me this crappy SW. Is it some kind of joke?". I would have the same feeling if someone handed me a program I can't even install. I can myself be very irritated sometimes when a system doesn't work while it should.

Not a joke. We believe in you, but we need more (tech) informations about this errors.

If you don't have Java installed then broke. If you use another version of Java then broke. If you change anything.. broke! Java works, this is true. But he has the same (even worst) problems.

Write once, compile everywhere. Right yeah...

This is more true (and more realistic) than Java: write and run everywhere.

Regards,
Marcos Douglas

Juha Manninen wrote

Ok, we had a Skype phone+chat session with my friend again trying to install Lazarus

I would not try (not even think about it!) to let an end user install my entire development environment on his machine, only to compile a program I wrote for him.

I would try *everything* to produce a binary of my application that the end user can easily use/install. For Linux and Windows I can already do this on one of my own (virtual) machines and if my end user had a Mac I would rather try to find somebody (not 250km away) who owns one and would be willing to help me with compiling and testing it there.

My end user would never ever be confronted with any of these ugly details.

[Idea:] Maybe somebody with a Mac and a lot of traffic quota and free electricity could setup a server that would receive zipped Lazarus projects via email, automatically build them and mail the resulting binary back to where it came from. Mac is the only OS that needs such a thing, everything else can be installed and run or virtualized/emulated on "normal" cheap PC hardware.

2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

It does change my opinion a bit. Hmm... I switch between Linux/Mac/Win7 daily with no problems. I use FPC and Lazarus from SVN with no problems.

There is no way Lazarus/FPC will end up being crap. If there is an issue it's most likely something the dev community has not encountered or a problem that they will end up telling you/him to fix.

Well Juha, you certainly raise an interesting issue. I think that requiring FPC/Lazarus to build an open source project is understood. I do think that having an understanding of OS permissions/issues common to specific deployment platforms is a core requirement. I do think that FPC/Lazarus is far to complicated for this relatively small group of developers to anticipate localized problems with operating systems and end-users to focus on issues that can be solved - trivially - by someone who has experience (remotely or directly) with the target platform to get around non-developmental problems such as the ones you are describing.

That being said I have personally encountered problems with install Linux specifically that the make scripts could have handled but I was forced to. It was with multiple instances of FPC. I had to re-route symbolic links - but I was able to get past those issues once I was familiar with FPC AND LINUX.

I've personally never had file permission problems on XP only b/c XP has limited security options and only with NTFS deployed.

It's interesting for me, to hear of your issue but I can assure you that what ever the problem is - it's only b/c a user did something that wasn't anticipated by the install scripts/batch/program and not an issue with the Development of Lazarus or FPC as it pertains to core development. And if it can be avoided - you will see it will be resolved - but you have to reproduce the issue - which I suspect you can't.

WOW. Good luck with this. Can't you just give him the Binary for him to place in his applications folder? Then, zip the source for his entertainment?

That IS a good one... But at least for the topic of this case... Juha, send me the zip of the project and I'll send you the binary.

Marcos Douglas wrote

> I think I must learn GUI programming with Java and port the code. Java

is

> already installed on those machines and runs for sure. > The other choise is to boot Windows XP on my mini-laptop, install

Lazarus

> there and build the program, then send the binary to my friend. He

lives

everywhere.

Indeed. I wrote several extensions for OpenOffice.org in Java and for some

time even tried to use the GUI Widgets from Java (Swing). It worked fine on

both of my development machines and I assumed, it would just run everywhere

else too (where Java is available). Then a Mac user came by and told me

that my extension crashed his installation. After getting my hands on a Mac

I was able to see the problem: the Java VM that is shipped with MacOS is a

bit different from the others ... some packages are different and the rules

for opening new dialogs/frames were completely different. In the end I had

to either handle Mac completely different or rewrite the whole extension to

use more calls to the OpenOffice.org API instead of relying on it's native

packages. I have no idea how I would have handled that if it wasn't just an

extension/plugin but should have been a full standalone app. Either way it

taught me that I definitely can't trust Java to "just run everywhere".

Without testing and if necessary platform specific workarounds/fixes, it

just doesn't/can't work, if the apps are complex enough. In the end I'm

still faster writing apps in Lazarus and compiling them for the target

platform than I am writing them in Java and searching workaround for all

those corner cases.

Just my two cents.

Best Regards,

Andreas.

2010/7/29 dmitry boyarintsev

If I understand right the version is the default when clicking Download link on Lazarus home page and then again the default link on SourceForge page. Other details I don't really know. I thought the installation is easy and I was not prepared for this hassle.
Now I will take a different strategy and create the binary for Win32. Then we will see later if he still wants to install Lazarus.

In the end this episode will not be a big problem. He will make a philosophical theory about how things should work but how they don't. :-)

A skype session with you would have problems because of the language barrier.
He could use a binary for Mac though. Do the OSX binaries have much variation? It is a recent x86 Mac. Is that info enough to build a binary for it?

Juha
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2010/7/29 Andrew Brunner

That IS a good one... But at least for the topic of this case... Juha, send me the zip of the project and I'll send you the binary.

Thanks. I will send it private.

Actually I asked this already on a mail to skalogryz:

Do the OSX binaries have much variation?
It is a recent x86 Mac. Is that info enough to build a binary for it?

Juha
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2010/7/29 Henry Vermaak

I personally managed to install it. Lucky me :-)

I think I underestimated the difficulty of installation for a non-programmer.
Now I take a different approach and build a binary for Win32 and maybe even get Mac binary to test.

In the end nothing serious is happening, it is a hobby and an experiment for us. But still the program can turn out to be useful for a real life problem.

Juha
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2010/7/29 Juha Manninen :

I personally managed to install it. Lucky me :-)

Glad to hear, that everything works as expected.

Btw, is your project close sourced?

You also need let Andrew Brunner know what OSX version your friend using. If Andrew's OSX is 10.6, and your friend's is 10.5, the project must be compiled with 10.5 SDK.
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Carbon_interface_FAQ#User_friendly_OS_version_requirement

thanks,
dmitry

2010/7/29 Andreas Schneider

Either way it taught me that I definitely can't trust Java to "just run everywhere".

Yes, I have heard of similar cases. The slogan is changed to: "Write once, debug everywhere"

Juha
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2010/7/29 dmitry boyarintsev

Yes, it works in my machines for my own development. I will look at the friend's Lazarus installation later (if he still wants it) and get him binaries first.

Btw, is your project close sourced?

No, it is very open. Actually it is a small experimental program but I am proud of it because it is so fast. Initially it had a very tiny loop for the main calculation. Then I optimized it so that 2 values are checked / round. Still, it is a tiny program.
I can copy it also here if someone wants to also need let Andrew Brunner know what OSX version your friend using.

Ok, thanks. I must ask it myself first.

Juha
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Juha Manninen wrote

I really don't know what went wrong. The fact is however that something went wrong for a person who can install most other SW. It means the installation is not as easy as it should be.

i kinda have to disagree there... it is not the installation or the installer that is the problem... quite simply is seems to be, based on your very brief error message(s), a permissions problem... you've seen this in the *nix world if you've installed the normal .deb or .rpm lazarus packages... they go in as admin and then users trying to use the libs can't get them (re)compiled because they don't have write access in the lib directories and similar... this is one of the main frustrations for all the different OS' when the packages aren't or can't be installed by the users in their own working directories...

BTW, do you think my idea of compiling a program using Lazarus by a non-programmer is a stupid idea? I honestly thought it was a cool idea.

considering that it is SOP in the *nix world, i don't think it a bad idea at all... especially when *nix users can generally get to a command line and type "make; make install"... all in all, i think it is a GoodIdea<tm> but there are some situations and problems to be handled... you've just found them and they are some of what i and others have complained about before ;)

But, maybe Lazarus should be touched only by programmers and it kind of justifies the difficult installation. It works as an intelligence test. If you can't install it, you are too stupid to program.

again, it is not the install that's the problem... it seems, from your post, to be purely permissions... indeed, if this was a fresh install then there were likely libraries that needed to be compiled and their output directory was a place where he had restricted permissions...

Hello Lazarus-List,

Thursday, July 29, 2010, 6:00:49 PM, you wrote:

JM> I personally managed to install it. Lucky me :-) JM> I think I underestimated the difficulty of installation for a JM> non-programmer.

A non-programmer or system admin (or at least personal system admin) takes different mental rules about almost everything in a computer environment (examples):

* Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.

* AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.

* Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer had labeled the diskettes' then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels. (the old flexible 5" floppies)

* Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with photocopies of the floppies...

* A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.

And for me the best one!:
------------
Novell NetWire SysOp:

Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"

Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"

Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"

Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"

Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."

Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, It's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"

Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it."

At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!
-------------------

So after a few smiles :) next time install some remote desktop software like VNC and install it yourself or at least supervise and capture error screens. I had suffered your same problem several times, like installing in Vista and the user changing "C:\Program files\SoftwareName" by "C:\C:\Your usual install folder without the quotes\" because he thinks it matches more exactly what my email tells him :)

----- Original Message -----

somehow i can actually see that happening... i have several friends who could sell ice to those who live in the permanently frozen north/south...

when i was "in the biz" i had to deal with a few similar to those listed in the original post... one solution i was told to make involved going to a large law firm and applying rub off decal letters to the space bars of every machine that had one... the result was that "ANY" in nice bright and shiny gold letters was on them all... we never got another call about the "ANY key" from them and they were one of our best clients for years to come ;)

i should also mention that this was back in the mid to late '80s and they had just purchased ~50-75 brand new 486 machines along with a large 8 or 12 ppm HP laser printer from us for their typing pool :)

those were the real heydays of the computer world :lol:

I know a much better story:

About ten years ago I subscribed to a technical mailing list about an open source pascal IDE in development. The years went by and all was fine.
Until some day, not so long ago, I found out that it is no technical mailing list but a chat room. I felt really stupid for not realizing it faster and not knowing the difference between a technical list and a chat room. This shows that even coders, like me, can fail very hard, so please stop making fun of non tech savy people.

R.

Hello Lazarus-List,

Friday, July 30, 2010, 3:11:02 PM, you wrote:

RG> I know a much better story:
RG> About ten years ago I subscribed to a technical mailing list RG> about an open source pascal IDE in development. [...]
RG> please stop making fun of non tech savy people.

Totally uneeded rant. The last sentence is enought to catch the message (catched).