Mattias Gaertner wrote

It is a very long mail thread. Maybe you can summarize the problem?

I've got a number of machines here on which I've got a copy of FPC 2.4.2 which will build itself, which I think confers a reasonable level of confidence on the compiler and libraries.

Where these machines are based on Linux, in most cases Debian "Etch" or "Squeeze", I've also compiled Lazarus (currently 0.9.29 28906) without problems. All paths are set up so that Lazarus can find the appropriate compiler binary and sources, there's adequate disc space and on relevant systems adequate RAM.

I've got absolutely no experience with fpGUI, until yesterday I'd never attempted to use it so I've got no preexisting files or paths "hanging around".

Using the instructions at
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/fpGUI_Interface i.e. with 3x symlinks, I cannot add fpGUI to the available LCLs; the Lazarus message window gives me

fpguiint.pp(42,12) Fatal: Can't find unit fpg_main used by fpguiint

I've checked file/directory ownership and access rights and can't see anything wrong. I've also tried adding this as suggested by Graeme:

4) This is a temporary work-around until Lazarus is updated:
    $ cd /home/graemeg/programming/fpgui/src
    $ cp ./VERSION_FILE.inc corelib/

I've also tried make LCL_PLATFORM=fpgui lcl but it appeared to fail silently.

I can build the UI designer using

cd <fpgui>/uidesigner
fpc @extrafpc.cfg uidesigner.lpr

or as a Lazarus project, but even after doing that I still can't build the LCL.

All above relates to x86 Linux.

As noted, I've been tinkering with SPARC Solaris 10 and have an FPC 2.4.2 that can build itself (plus some but not all packages). However on this I can't even build fpGUI using a command line (above) plus -vt, eventually getting

Fatal: Can't find unit fpg_main used by uidesigner Fatal: Compilation aborted

i.e. similar to what I see when trying to build LCL+fpGUI.

If nobody has any blinding revelations at this point I'd really rather not push it. FPC appears to be working on Solaris 10 but Lazarus with the standard LCL won't due to missing libraries. I'll investigate a later Solaris presently but not immediately.

What gives:
ls -la lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/corelib/fpg_main.pas ?

svn diff?

Attach the output of
cd lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/
make

Mattias

-rw-r--r-- 1 markMLl markMLl 57000 Aug 2 14:16
lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/corelib/fpg_main.pas

where markMLl is user 1000.

svn diff?

It's the 0.7 release rather than svn,

lrwxrwxrwx 1 markMLl markMLl 9 Jan 12 16:49 fpgui -> fpgui-0.7 drwxr-xr-x 14 markMLl markMLl 4096 Aug 2 14:16 fpgui-0.7 -rw-r--r-- 1 markMLl markMLl 3308790 Jan 12 16:49 fpgui-0.7.tar.gz 0 1>markMLl at pye-dev-07:/usr/local/share/fpgui$ cksum * cksum: fpgui: Is a directory
cksum: fpgui-0.7: Is a directory
592533306 3308790 fpgui-0.7.tar.gz

Note the symlink there hence paths like
/usr/local/share/fpgui/fpgui/src/corelib

Attach the output of cd lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/ make

0 1>markMLl at pye-dev-07:/usr/local/share/lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui$ make /bin/rm -f ../../units/i386-linux/fpgui/interfaces.ppu \ ../../units/i386-linux/fpgui/interfaces.o
/usr/local/bin/ppc386 -gl -dfpgui -Fu../../units/i386-linux -Fu. -Fucorelib -Fugui -Fucorelib/x11
-Fu/usr/local/lib/fpc/2.4.2/units/i386-linux/rtl -Ficorelib -Ficorelib/x11 -FE. -FU../../units/i386-linux/fpgui -di386 interfaces.pp Free Pascal Compiler version 2.4.2 [2010/11/16] for i386 Copyright (c) 1993-2010 by Florian Klaempfl
Target OS: Linux for i386
Compiling interfaces.pp
46 lines compiled, 2.9 sec

Ok, the make works.
Start the IDE in a terminal and compile the LCL for fpgui. Send the output.

Mattias

Got it, mea culpa:

WorkDir="/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/lcl"

but the version of Lazarus I was running was 0.9.29 in lazarus-testing. With that fixed I can build an fpGUI LCL from inside Lazarus, can compile and run a trivial test program, and can build the UI Designer. Also for completeness make LCL_PLATFORM=fpgui lcl appears to complete successfully.

At which point I think I'll swap back onto the Solaris 10 system, because I think having the UI Designer running would be a worthwhile stepping stone towards Lazarus...

OK Graeme, your turn. To compile the UI designer for SPARC Solaris 10 I need to add the users package to FPC, in addition to the others (bug 0018271). However linkage stops with

/export/home/local-share/fpgui/fpgui-0.7/lib/sparc-solaris/fpg_x11.o(.text+0x10f0): In function
`FPG_X11_TFPGX11APPLICATION_$__STARTCOMPOSING$TXEVENT$$LONGWORD': : undefined reference to `Xutf8LookupString'

plus three more referring to the same function. It looks as though that's aliased straight into libX11, presumably Sun's X11 doesn't have the UTF8 entry points.

Apologies to anybody who considers this wildly off-topic, but I'm treating this as a stepping stone towards getting Lazarus running as well as a valuable build exercise.

Hi Mark

The fpg_x11.pas unit also contains a XmbLookupString() function definition - using the same parameters as the UTF8 function. In a pinch, try and replace all the Xutf8LookupString calls with the XmbLookupString calls. Text input might give issues, but displaying text and widget paint should still work.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Hi Mark > /export/home/local-share/fpgui/fpgui-0.7/lib/sparc-solaris/fpg_x11.o(.text+0x10f0):> In function> `FPG_X11_TFPGX11APPLICATION_$__STARTCOMPOSING$TXEVENT$$LONGWORD':> : undefined reference to `Xutf8LookupString'>> plus three more referring to the same function. It looks as though that's> aliased straight into libX11, presumably Sun's X11 doesn't have the UTF8> entry points. The fpg_x11.pas unit also contains a XmbLookupString() functiondefinition - using the same parameters as the UTF8 function. In apinch, try and replace all the Xutf8LookupString calls with theXmbLookupString calls. Text input might give issues, but displayingtext and widget paint should still work.

OK, it compiles and runs with that hack- at least enough to prove the concept. Icons on buttons representing controls are missing and text in open file dialog is about 1pt (text on normal controls etc. OK)- I'm definitely not trying to find fault here, since I think being able to bring it up on a new OS that easily shows your code in a very favourable light.

On ReactOS I see the same problem with the icons on the buttons, but the open file dialog text is OK.

Paul Breneman wrote

On ReactOS I see the same problem with the icons on the buttons, but the open file dialog text is OK.

How stable is ReactOS these days? Last time I use it, was over a year ago, and then not all Windows apps functioned correctly either.

Graeme.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

OK, it compiles and runs with that hack- at least enough to prove the concept.

Thank for giving feedback on your progress - I'm glad I could help a bit.

definitely not trying to find fault here, since I think being able to bring it up on a new OS that easily shows your code in a very favourable light.

Unfortunately I don't have access to a SPARC system, so it will be up to you if you want to take this further. I wonder if fpGUI will behave the same on a x86 Solaris system - as it does on your SPARC Solaris system. I'll see if I can download a OpenSolaris CD or something, though I have never worked on Solaris either. I went to DistroWatch and read that OpenSolaris is discontinue... is that only OpenSolaris, or Solaris (if there still is a product like that) as well?

You helped a lot, because fpGUI and the UI designer are probably usable for GUI work on Solaris with minor tweaks, and might be usable for simple Lazarus projects (using lazbuild, not the IDE).

I've got one Solaris 8 and one Solaris 10 development system, I'm currently backporting FPC onto 8 (works, but haven't proven it can compile itself). I might go looking for (Open)Solaris 11, but at present everything appears to be in flux since OpenSolaris has forked/migrated to try to achieve independence from Oracle... I don't even know whether they currently have anything downloadable.

If you (or any other FPC/Lazarus developer) wanted access I could probably set up an SSH reverse proxy to get you through our firewall. However I'd much rather not have the Sun machine on any more than necessary- it's in my workroom and is loud, hot, and hungry. On the other hand it's several orders of magnitude faster than some of the other kit I've got here, e.g. the ARM which takes a week to link Lazarus.

My own opinion is that Solaris and possibly SPARC might be worth supporting. I think that Oracle will be more positive about SPARC than Sun were in their final couple of years- having their own line of CPUs that they can use for distinctive turnkey systems is probably good business. In that case Oracle will backtrack on their existing commitment to Linux and instead push Solaris, to be honest Sun did not appear to be fully committed to to Linux and if you wanted to do anything clever with their kit you had little option but to run Solaris.

The remaining big question is how many Java users Oracle will alienate with their attempts to take full control, and whether Lazarus can take advantage of the situation.

I haven't done very much testing. My main interest is the possibility of using it for some embedded stuff. I don't really care if it runs all Windows apps correctly. It will probably be a *long* time before that (if ever) happens.

But if it reliably runs a console app (or a fpGUI, Delphi, or Lazarus Win32 app) that would be some good first steps. After that it probably depends on what I/O devices would be needed and how well they are supported.

On the ReactOS forums there have been a few discussions (long ago) of being able to strip away the GUI. I think that would be a great option but it seems the developers are trying to duplicate NT and they have little interest in such an option.

It's worth noting that the ReactOS developers can be... abrupt is the most charitable word I can use... when dismissing suggestions they consider without merit. Even if they subsequently adopt something very similar.

They are obviously in an extremely difficult position though, with MS probably scrutinising their every move.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

I've got one Solaris 8 and one Solaris 10 development system, I'm currently backporting FPC onto 8 (works, but haven't proven it can compile itself). I might go looking for (Open)Solaris 11, but at present

I google'ed Solaris and OpenSolaris and read a bit out it, and indeed it does look like OpenSalaris is currently in limbo. Anyway, I'll download the last available CD image for x86, and just give fpGUI a go on that. Maybe I can reduce some of the work you would need to get it 100% under SPARC Solaris.

Paul Breneman wrote

On the ReactOS forums there have been a few discussions (long ago) of being able to strip away the GUI. I think that would be a great option but it seems the developers are trying to duplicate NT and they have little interest in such an option.

At least according to the source code ReactOS should be capable of booting into a Console only mode. Adding the option "/CONSOLE" to the command line in freeldr.ini should be sufficient as "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\ConsoleShell" is set to "cmd.exe" by default... I couldn't get it working in 0.3.12 though...

Regards,
Sven

According to this thread (
http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8925 ) from Friday on the ReactOS forum that is a bug. They are working to get the OS "text mode only" bootable again.

Regards,
Sven

If you could sort out the UTF-8, text and icon issues then it would probably be good for at least Solaris 8 through 10. Jonas tells me that be runs regressions on 9, I've now got the FPC compiler self-building on 8 (haven't tried Lazarus or the text IDE).

Solaris 8 is arguably still significant since it was the last version that supported some of the classic hardware- sun4d (SPARCserver etc.), x86 PCI cards, possibly some of the high-performance graphics. Solaris 11 probably has more precompiled libraries (sunfreeware.com etc.) which I think will make it a prerequisite for Lazarus.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

How stable is ReactOS these days? Last time I use it, was over a year ago, and then not all Windows apps functioned correctly either.

I d/lded and tried the ReacOS life CD some months ago. It did not start on any of the PCs I tried to boot it on (Intel and AMD).

-Michael

I've had it working after a fashion in a Qemu guest, but it gave odd problems like not being able to write to some files- problems I also see with NT in a similar environment so I suspect that Qemu's emulation is imperfect in some areas.

I've used the QEmu download in the past and the VMware download recently which worked for me.

Thanks Sven for that info!