Dear List,

I know it's me, and I beg your pardon for this, but every time I try to upgrade from a lazarus version to another...it's a mess. It happened before, but today I tried to upgrade from 0.9.28.3 to 0.9.30 stable releases
Uninstalling old versions, always leaves something behind. For example I had some packages of mine installed in the old one, and the new one complained it couldn't find the package file (so it created a dummy one). Why and how did the new one searched for them? It seems to me that I cannot uninstall completely.

As a bonus, the new 0.9.30 has a problem with my toolbar. In the office win32 pc I have a top screen windows launch bar, always on top, that let's me be confortable when I am away from my Mac. The lazarus 0.9.30 menu bar keeps going behind it (like many other apps, also) and even if I fix the position, the next time is behind again....somehow not remembering the preference, which 0.9.28.3 did.

Generally speaking, why do I have to _install_ (in the win32 sense) lazarus? Isn't it possible to have a portable installation? If I compile it from scratch, set a few environment options and register some extension, should it work?
The same is true for FPC, can it be portable?

Thanks,

Roberto

Do you not need to install.
I use the FPC/Lazarus in an external HD without problems, but you need to get FPC and Lazarus from SVN (or Git, if you prefer). I made this tutorial a few months ago, see:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Lazarus#Compiling.2Finstalling_FPC_and_Lazarus_from_Sources_of_SVN_.28Win32.29

...that is the tutorial I used to "install" FPC/Lazarus in 3 machines (home, work and external HD to use in any machine).

Marcos Douglas

Any file you place in Lazarus's folder that did not arrive from the installation will be kept.
You also have in your home directory (I do not know where in Windows) a "hidden" folder of Lazarus, where it saves all of it's settings, including components you have installed. These settings are written in XML format, so if you must, you can edit them by hand (not recommended though).

You should tell the IDE in Tools->Options->Desktop to save and restore the position (and size) of the main window. If you do not tell it to, it will place it on the default location, or location you set by hand on the Desktop tab if I remember correctly.

What does portable means ? In my Linux machines I do not install Lazarus, but have it on my home directory and execute it by hand, and also compile it as needed.

I've created my own package for FPC that I do install it on my system. I compile it every few weeks. But All you require is to have the execution programs on your Path, and set fpc.cfg (at your home directory) to point to the proper path of the compiled units.

Ido

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Roberto Padovani wrote

I know it's me, and I beg your pardon for this, but every time I try to upgrade from a lazarus version to another...it's a mess. It happened before, but today I tried to upgrade from 0.9.28.3 to 0.9.30 stable releases

Don't upgrade. Carefully erase (everything!), and then reinstall.

Uninstalling old versions, always leaves something behind. For example I had some packages of mine installed in the old one, and the new one complained it couldn't find the package file (so it created a dummy one)

I do agree that installers should ask if the old config should be reused. They seem to be versioned, so that should be possible.

It seems to me that I cannot uninstall completely.

Simply kill ~/.lazarus on *nix and -alikes, and lazarus dirs in your profile on windows. No need for drama.

Generally speaking, why do I have to _install_ (in the win32 sense) lazarus?

I guess to preconfigure the configuration. In short to seed e.g. the FPC source directory the installer just installed.

Isn't it possible to have a portable installation?

To some degree yes. There are possibilities, and 0.9.30 should be again a bit more capable than earlier.

The most important bits are -pcp= (that sets the configuration directory) and --lazarus-dir that sets the main lazarus dir. Then the some paths should be initialized relative to these paths, and then some script should devise where it is started and pass this info to lazarus using -pcp and --lazarus-dir

If I compile it from scratch, set a few environment options and register some extension, should it work?

Environment options? There are no environment options. By default Lazarus searches its config in the user profile. If it is not there, it initialize an empty, but non functional one.

The same is true for FPC, can it be portable?

Standalone FPC works slightly differently. It searches for (roughly) /etc/fpc.cfg or ~/.fpc.cfg and that file should contain mainly the path to the RTL and other precompiled units.

Lazarus overrides that by generating and passing an own fpc.cfg. Not unlike Delphi with dcc32.cfg btw. The info for that comes from Lazarus' own configuration.

2011/5/31 Marcos Douglas :

Good new, I only have to work around the fact that I cannot access svn from work.

thanks!

2011/5/31 ik :

Tried that, but it did not create any lps or config file.

What does portable means ? In my Linux machines I do not install Lazarus, but have it on my home directory and execute it by hand, and also compile it as needed.

I am forced to win32

thanks,

Roberto

2011/5/31 Marco van de Voort :

Sorry for the poor english. The problem with winsdoz is that "lazarus dirs in your profile" seems to mean a lot of different things in different computers

hmm... I'll try to make it portable, starting from the sources. But maybe a precompiled binary for win32 with a little utility (like a cheklist) to setup those cfg will be of help to many.

Thanks,

Roberto

The current config directory is shown in
View / IDE Internals / About IDE

[...] Generally speaking, why do I have to _install_ (in the win32 sense) lazarus?

It registers file types, creates desktop shortcuts and sets the path to FPC and FPC sources.

Isn't it possible to have a portable installation?

It is possible. You need 0.9.31 and a start script. The script depends on your needs.

If I compile it from scratch, set a few environment options and register some extension, should it work?

Yes

The same is true for FPC, can it be portable?

Yes.

Mattias

2011/5/31 Mattias Gaertner :

I'll give you some feedback on this tomorrow.

Very good, wanna try it!
Can you please hint a specific trunk release? Or a snapshot (even better so that I can download it directly at work without svn access) ?

Roberto

Upgrading via svn is fully supported.

The version is for the format. The IDE upgrades automatically old configs. But it does not automatically change paths. The problem is that some 0.9.30 installers install Lazarus and/or FPC to another directory than the 0.9.28 installers, but do not adapt the paths in the configs.
Therefore 0.9.31 now checks a few more things and
shows a setup dialog.

Lazarus does not generate a fpc.cfg. In fact it uses the values given by the compiler, so Lazarus uses the standard fpc.cfg too.

Mattias

As far as I know the trunk revision 30992 has only two known regressions. The close button is not transparent+windows and carbon and the onmousedown comes after the popup menu in gtk2. Probability is high that there are some unknown regressions, but they are unknown.

Mattias

You seem to have the old Lazarus config in the default place, from where it is used by *every* Lazarus installation. (never destroyed) Remedy: use --primary-config-path with *every* Lazarus installation (desktop icon)

The new installation tries to include the same packages, as installed in the previous version/config.

For some inobvious reason the IDE MainBar has hard coded coordinates and extent. You'll have to patch the IDE (Main.pas TMainIDE.Create)

Generally speaking, why do I have to _install_ (in the win32 sense) lazarus? Isn't it possible to have a portable installation?

Lazarus tries to make it simple for a single installation, in detail on Windows. Multiple or new installations are harder to handle.

If I compile it from scratch, set a few environment options and register some extension, should it work?

This works, when you destroy the Lazarus config from the default place (...user\...\Lazarus\) and add --pcp=... to the desktop icons.

The same is true for FPC, can it be portable?

Use "make install" to install multiple versions in parallel. AFAIK every such installation needs its own fpc.cfg file. Then switch the FPC EXE and Source paths, in the Lazarus IDE.

DoDi

Roberto Padovani wrote

> Good new, I only have to work around the fact that I cannot access svn from work.

Then try the git mirrors. They can be access via the 'git' or 'https' protocols. No sane firewall setup blocks the latter.

Regards,
- Graeme -

2011/6/1 Graeme Geldenhuys :

If https works, try:
https://lazarus.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/lazarus/trunk/

If you don't have a svn client at work, you can download a source snapshot from: http://www.hu.freepascal.org/lazarus/
or
ftp://ftp.hu.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/snapshots/

Vincent

Then I'm slightly surprised that the stick edition worked. It could be that the app simply overwrites the fpc.cfg on startup, and Detlev already solved that.

(it doesn't seem to use environment variables, a nicer choice, since that would allow a batchfile to fix that)

Grr, I really need to create a new batchfile for the portable version.

Good. It bit me several times that I put a lazarus on some machine that had Lazarus before, and it would refuse to start (since the version the config was from had packages installed that were not installed in the new version, don't exist anymore, or were 3rd party)

2011/6/1 Vincent Snijders :

https works fine and I got a lazarus trunk.
But what is the https URL of the fpc sources?

ftp does not work either.

Roberto

Roberto Padovani wrote

https works fine and I got a lazarus trunk. But what is the https URL of the fpc sources?

From the FPC website:

svn checkout http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk fpc

Yes it isn't HTTPS, but only HTTP. Though I can't image that HTTP is blocked on a firewall either - after all, most admins think of that port as the be-all, end-all of ports.

Regards,
- Graeme -

At our office, http is not blocked, but the transparent proxy is not transparent enough to pass webdav requests uses by svn over http.

Vincent

Vincent Snijders wrote

At our office, http is not blocked, but the transparent proxy is not transparent enough to pass webdav requests uses by svn over http.

Ah yes, I forgot about that. I had the same problem with my ISP's "transparent" proxy a few years back. I think back then Michael helped me, by letting the subversion server listen to an alternative port, and I believe that solved my problem back then. I can't remember the details though.

Regards,
- Graeme -

2011/6/1 Graeme Geldenhuys :

You can't imagine like our admins... try to imagine http being blocked, because that's it.
SVN (and all the other git, mercurial, ...) work only through https.

[OT: begin]
As a bonus, our proxy runs a huge regular expression on the URLs to filter out whatever seems to be suspect.
For example, the domain download.microsoft.com is filtered out, like anything social network, image share network, needless to say any URL that contains sexual content.
For example I cannot download
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/resources_extract.html because the zip file has no underline, so that you get resourceSEXtract. The same is true for a URL that contained "DocumentsExplorer" .... can you spot the sex in it ?? :-(
[end;]

Do you have a pendriver? Get the sources in your home and copy to the pendriver. I forgot to tell about parameters of Marco van de Voort said: -pcp and --lazarus-dir. To use Lazarus in a pendriver, you need to study this parameters, ok?

Marcos Douglas

2011/6/1 Marcos Douglas :

Thanks to everyone!!
I successfully created my portable environment, with everything setup to be conveniently updated by script.
Currently I built lazarus 0.9.31 (r30999) with fpc 2.5.1 (r17599), which in turns was built with fpc 2.4.4 release as bootstrap. This lazarus fixes the problem of the desktop position.

To summarize it all, the most useful wiki's are:

http://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Lazarus#Compiling.2Finstalling_FPC_and_Lazarus_from_Sources_of_SVN_.28Win32.29 http://wiki.freepascal.org/Multiple_Lazarus

to which I'm adding that for fifth-world filtered people like me, the lazarus source code can also be retrieved from:

https://lazarus.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/lazarus/trunk/

By the way, in the end I made it with the fpc sources that I costly downloaded yesterday at home...
but is there an https svn for fpc as well or not?

Thanks,

Roberto

ROFL. You know who made this work? You!

I made the scripts for the Lazarus configuration, you for fpc (I think you did it at the HCC fair?)

Here you can download all the files needed to create the stick: http://cnoc.nl.alt001.com/extranet/fpc/lazpack.zip

It contains your code and an explanation how to create the stick. You an also only strip the batchfiles and such to make your own...

Joost.

I like the file Lazarus/USBLazarusStart/Attention.txt: Readme

It contains your code and an explanation how to create the stick. You an also only strip the batchfiles and such to make your own...

Mattias