I'm trying to build and minimally-exercise RC1 for various platforms, I might be some time. Below are observations that apply to multiple targets.

I notice that when IDE startup changes the Lazarus directory etc., that it leaves the path to the lhelp binary unchanged. So after changing a system from lazarus-trunk to lazarus-1.0-rc1, the options still refer to the lhelp binary in the lazarus-trunk tree. I presume that this is fixable by putting a macro in the path.

I notice that you can't build the documentation using e.g. make chmdocs as part of the same operation as the rest of the IDE, since it assumes that the path to the lazarus directory has already been corrected. The correct sequence is to get the sources via svn, make bigide, run IDE to correct paths and then make chmdocs.

When lhelp comes up in response to F1 on a keyword, the left pane only shows the database relevant to that keyword. While other databases can be opened successfully, showing the names of all available databases as soon as lhelp comes up would make it look more complete.

While the LCL/IDE help is building, there are many messages of the form

Warning: Target ID of <link> is unknown: "#rtl.Classes.TStrings" Warning: Target ID of <link> is unknown: "#rtl.Classes.TStrings.Text"

Do these represent a permanent problem which should be reported as an error, or will the links be automatically resolved once the RTL database is available?

$LazarusDir() works fine here. Noted that this is a case where there isn't a dialog(ue) to select a directory or binary, but I think it would be useful if the IDE could detect when it was being asked to store something relative to its own directory and asked the user whether to collapse this into a macro.

Hitting F1 over a different category of keyword correctly adds the database to the left-hand pane.

lhelp in RC1 doesn't automatically shut down when the IDE does. I think I've seen this working in the past, but I've just checked and a fairly-recent trunk similarly misbehaves.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

I'm trying to build and minimally-exercise RC1 for various platforms, I might be some time. Below are observations that apply to multiple targets.

<snip>

When lhelp comes up in response to F1 on a keyword, the left pane only shows the database relevant to that keyword. While other databases can be opened successfully, showing the names of all available databases as soon as lhelp comes up would make it look more complete.

Agreed, and it would also allow searching across multiple help files (e.g. LCL and RTL, handy for e.g. UTF8/non UTF8 equivalents).

Already filed as bug
http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=22110
with a rough patch that will need to be refined.

Mark Morgan Lloyd hat am 16. August 2012 um
12:03 geschrieben:> I'm trying to build and minimally-exercise RC1 for various platforms, I

In RC1 the lhelp path uses by default macros.

Patches are welcome.

Have you built the fpdocs?

Mattias
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/attachments/20120816/31899a13/attachment.html>

Apologies for my poor threading, our gateway's dropped the message from Mattias to which I'm commenting.

I've got them in a .zip, which I think only contains the compressed files. My build script is decompressing this after the Lazarus stuff is built, I've not checked whether Lazarus's make clean wipes all .chm files but I think that I'm seeing the same behavior both on the initial and subsequent builds (if there's a difference, it's in the number of warning lines).

As mentioned:
http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=22110

Help welcome though: the code should just tell lhelp to open all chm files it knows about, but it opens all help sources now, e.g. also online help.

Thanks,
Reinier

Should help for e.g. an undocumented constructor in the LCL "cross over" to something appropriate in the RTL, e.g. TObject.Create?

With Lazarus docs built from svn and FPC docs from a zipfile, what I appear to have is that if I go to a project's .lpr, hit F1 over Application (as in Application.Initialize) and follow lhelp to TApplication, if I try to get help for the Create method it takes me back to the Forms page (tooltip shows ../forms/index.html).