The IDE just seems to get buggier and buggier the longer I use it. Can't click on the tabs in the editor, and if I use F10 to select a tab manually, the edit focus stays on the old page. Is anything being done to fix this?

Timothy Groves wrote

The IDE just seems to get buggier and buggier the longer I use it. Can't click on the tabs in the editor, and if I use F10 to select a tab manually, the edit focus stays on the old page. Is anything being done to fix this?

No, because others don't have such problems. The problem must be in your system. You did not mention your OS nor your Lazarus version. It is difficult to say more about the possible reasons.

Juha

Lazarus 0.9.30.2-2 on XUbuntu 12.04-1 running KDE 4.

I see nothing like that with 0.9.30- or with newer versions- on Debian+KDE4 on x86. Can't speak for x86-64, which in my case I have not got.

Using any docking manager? They are *all* beta.

Please update to 1.0.4 or even snapshot from fixes.

Can you try Lazarus 1.0.4?

Mattias

Mattias Gaertner wrote

Can you try Lazarus 1.0.4?

Lazarus 1.0.4 is not yet in the debian repositories. I see that sourceforge has a more recent version available as a deb file, but I have had difficulty with these in the past. I will give it a try.

Updating Lazarus from Ubuntu is a little difficult (if you're new to Linux like me) since the Ubuntu Software Center is set up to install the older Lazarus version using FPC2.4.4.

That said, my first step would be to try reloading the older Lazarus with Ubunto (uninstall everything first, then reinstall) and see if the problems go away. (If you've installed a lot of Lazarus packages, that is not going to be fun. But maybe some of your components are misbehaving?)

But that's just my 2 cents worth -- I'm FOR SURE no expert.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

I see nothing like that with 0.9.30- or with newer versions- on Debian+KDE4 on x86. Can't speak for x86-64, which in my case I have not got.

I have x86-64, Linux Mint + KDE, and it works well. :) Anyway, Lazarus 0.9.30 is very old. You should not waste your time with it while there are more recent versions available. You have Linux so I would recommend Lazarus trunk from SVN server. Once you have FPC installed, it is very easy to install, and it is rather stable most of time. Linux users typically don't have problems running this from console:

$ svn co http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/trunk lazarus

More about it:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Getting_Lazarus

Juha

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Marc Hanisch wrote

I had the same experience on Ubuntu 12.10. Installing the .deb from Sourceforge was easy and solved the problem.

Well, installing the deb from Sourceforge was far from easy, but it seems to have done the trick. Thanks to all who helped, and sorry about the initial post; I was *very* frustrated.

I agree. In my case I don't go anywhere near the standard Debian FPC and Lazarus packages, instead I install a generic FPC and then build Lazarus from a source release or from SVN.

Having packages in the major distreaux's repositories is pretty much inescapable to make sure that the maximum number of potential users know FPC/Lazarus exists. But the release cycle of- in particular- Debian is so slow compared with the rapid progress being made by Lazarus that they shouldn't be regarded as much more than a sample.

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I think I'm going to try following the "Getting_Lazarus" instructions in the wiki. Before I do though: 1)how thoroughly do I need to purge my system of my old FPC and Lazarus installations? And 2) do I have to manually install FPC2.6.0 before I try the Getting_Lazarus directions?

Marc Hanisch wrote

Is the package maintainer reading this list? Debian should have at least the 1.0 version...

I am afraid Debian's package maintainer is not reading this.

Juha

Timothy Groves wrote

The IDE just seems to get buggier and buggier the longer I use it.

I feel your pain - my experience is exactly the same. I have now revert all the way back to 0.9.30.2 (I could probably try .4 too).

With 1.0.2, 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 I can all sorts of problems.

- I can nagivate (Click+LClick) code which I used to do
- I get focus issues with editor window and main window
- The latest is key mappings that go bonkers until I restart the IDE eg: Ctrl+O (open file) stops working
Ctrl+H (jump back to previous navigation point) stops working ...and lots more...

All these occur on multiple systems too, so don't blame my setup. I have tried Ubuntu 10.04 (Gnome2), 12.04 (Unity) and FreeBSD 9.1 (JWM).

I know it is only your pet/hobby project you work in in your spare time, but take some pride in what you develop. Take a step back and see what a buggy mess you guys are making. Spend some quality time and fix things instead of adding the latest and greatest buggy feature.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Did you report these problems? If not how should the Lazarus developers know they exist? E.g. I have no such problems on ArchLinux (Awesome) with Lazarus 1.1 [I do have some problems, but these are more related to the fact that Awesome is a tiling window manager instead of a stacking one...]. And from what I've seen from other persons in this thread they don't seem to have problems either...

Regards,
Sven

Juha Manninen wrote

You should not waste your time with it while there are more recent versions available.

On the contrary, those point release of 0.9.30 are the last sane (working) versions of Lazarus. Everything afterwards are buggy as hell. I can't speak much of the Windows OS, because there I am using 0.9.30.4 and it works beautifully - you will have to pry that out of my cold dead hands before I upgrade it. 90% of my work gets done under Linux and FreeBSD though - both 64-bit systems.

Regards,
- Graeme -

2013/1/21 Graeme Geldenhuys :

I guess this advice will help the OP.

Vincent

2013/1/21 Vincent Snijders :

I forgot the irony tags.

I meant: I guess this advice won't help the OP.

Vincent

Sven Barth wrote

Did you report these problems? If not how should the Lazarus developers know they exist?

Yes - I'm probably the largest contributor of bug reports. But recently I gave up reporting every single bug I find. I'm wasting more and more office hours doing so. So if the bugs get me down, I switch to MSEide for a while (though no code intelli sense or whatever it is called, drives me nuts after a while, then I move back to Lazarus).

Also some bugs are very hard to report because I can't reproduce all of them on demand. And as a developer, I know that getting a bug report that you can't reproduce is a big turn-down.

Regards,
- Graeme -

All I will say is that I'm not seeing the sort of gross problems that you claim. Oh, and that I don't think your constant harping on about problems with the project does you, it, or in the current case the OP any favours.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Yes - I'm probably the largest contributor of bug reports.

Sorry, I am way ahead of you

As for the latest feature vs fixing:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_1.0_fixes_branch. Just some of the issues that where *fixed*. Seems to me that there is a lot of fixing going on.

As for the pride, we take a lot of it. In fact we take so much pride in it, that someone once attested us a "god complex"... ;) Oh wait, that was you:
http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/2010-March/050152.html

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

All these occur on multiple systems too, so don't blame my setup. I have tried Ubuntu 10.04 (Gnome2), 12.04 (Unity) and FreeBSD 9.1 (JWM).

Hm, there must be a common factor though, something to explain them.

If it is not the OS, nor the installation... Maybe it is PEBKAC ? ;)

SCNR

I think I'd delete both FPC and Lazarus, in the knowledge that Debian probably won't remove more than's necessary (it usually errs on the side of caution). Install FPC with reference to the "Current Version" section at http://www.freepascal.org/ Expect this to put most executables in /usr/local/bin, they'll have an internal reference to /usr/local/lib/fpc/2.6.0 which is where the rest of the stuff lives, and there'll be a configuration file at /etc/fpc.cfg

I'd suggest not getting involved with rebuilding the compiler at this stage. 2.6.0 is stable, and it's the appropriate version for a reasonable spread of Lazarus revisions. You will probably want the FPC sources after you've built Lazarus, but let's cross that one when we get to it.

Get the Lazarus source either from e.g.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Zip%20_%20GZip/ or from svn e.g. svn co
http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/tags/lazarus_1_0_4 which I tend to put in something like /usr/local/share/lazarus-1.0.4

Build Lazarus using e.g. make bigide and if something goes wrong post the error message here.

I'm not saying that lot's perfect, I'm sure there's something in it to offend both FPC/Lazarus and Debian purists, but it's what works for me.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

problems with the project does you, it, or in the current case the OP any favours.

Hey Mark, read the first message... Timothy is experiencing the same things as I am, so I'm not alone. Lazarus seems to be getting more buggy than usual. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Martin wrote

As for the pride, we take a lot of it. In fact we take so much pride in it, that someone once attested us a "god complex"... ;) Oh wait, that was you:

Oh, what a warm fuzzy feeling I now get - knowing I'm in good company.

Don't worry, we will blame my system for all the problems. Ignoring the fact that I have over 10 years Linux experience. Ignoring the fact that I switched between two completely different PC's. Ignoring the fact that I switched between two LTS versions of Ubuntu. Ignoring the fact that I switched between 2 completely different linux distros (Ubuntu & OpenSUSE). Ignoring the fact that I was so desperate, that I switched to a whole different OS - FreeBSD. Yet still experience these same issues in random fashion. I guess my systems must just be that special.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Martin wrote

If it is not the OS, nor the installation... Maybe it is PEBKAC ?

Or the common factor - software I keep trying to run. Lazarus!

SCNR

[ no smiley face this time ]

Regards,
- Graeme -

It has been almost three years since we had similar "fun" about Lazarus: http://www.lazarussupport.com/lazarus/testimonials

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

I see nothing like that with 0.9.30- or with newer versions- on Debian+KDE4 on x86. Can't speak for x86-64, which in my case I have not got.

I'm using Kubuntu 12.10 (x86-64), no problems until now.

I have installed lazarus 1.0.4 sf package, but I'm using the repositories packages of fpc and fpc-source.

By the way, ubuntu repositories offers a Lazarus(9.30)-qt package.

How can I create an 1.0.x equivalent of that?

Strange though... If you read all of his messages:

He had the problems with: Lazarus 0.9.30.2-2 on XUbuntu 12.04-1 running KDE 4.
He then said, he tried the current deb from sourceforge, and it solved it for him.

Marc Hanisch also said that the upgrade did him good.

You have the problem with 1.0.x and you are fine with 0.9.30,2 (you reverted to that)
So apparently something was fixed, and something else broken....

---------------------

As for the rest of my messages, I responded ONLY to the style of your message. Not to the content of it.

Yes, and what you're doing isn't helping. What we should be doing is trying to find out WTF is going wrong, not making unfocussed complaints that the whole project is crap and no version has worked properly for years.

I've got problems with 1.0.4 on SPARC Linux which is probably something to do with alignment although there's an outside chance that it could be due to the computer having more CPUs than most- it's been little-used for several years so I've not been testing FPC/Lazarus on it regularly. http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=23703

Timothy, Graeme: I stress that I'm not seeing the sort of gross unreliability that you report, and I've probably run most (even-numbered) versions since around 0.9.24. If you've got specific problems then please raise them for discussion and if necessary bug-report them. From a support POV, I'm bothered that there's something unpleasant lurking: number or speed of CPUs, type of graphics card, amount or type of memory (testable on x86 using a MemTest CD).

My usual OS-of-choice, irrespective of CPU, is Debian+KDE. In some cases this is KDE3, in others KDE4; in most cases I run headless. I usually run the IDE with GTK rather than Qt, although where possible I try to build for Qt on occasion. Of the major platforms, I'm not at present able to test x86-64; of the minor ones I'm only able to run ARM and MIPS via emulation, and haven't yet attempted to run FreeBSD.

--------------------- As for the rest of my messages, I responded ONLY to the style of your message. Not to the content of it.

When somebody makes that sort of complaint, the style becomes content.

Provided that you've got the libqt4pas-dev
package (which should also imply that you've got libqt4pas5) just get the source and build with something like

make LCL_PLATFORM=qt bigide

Lazarus (particularly newer versions) is very tolerant of multiple copies: just make sure they're in their own directories.

Paul Breneman wrote

http://www.lazarussupport.com/

On another note, I see that site was also short lived. [yes I know it is not part of the Lazarus project per se]

- copyright noticed last updated in 2011
- Latest FPC release: 2.4.4
- Latest stable Lazarus: 0.9.30 (this I actually agree with)
- Last news article posted: Aug 2011

It's a pity. For their sake I was hoping some type of commercial venture with FPC / Lazarus would be successful. On the up side, maybe they are so busy with paid support, they don't have time to update their website. ;-)

Regards,
- Graeme -

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

From a support POV, I'm bothered that there's something unpleasant lurking: number or speed of CPUs, type of graphics card, amount or type of memory (testable on x86 using a MemTest CD).

The hardware I'm running on now is very new - 4 months old. It was a whole new system. Intel with 16GB high end non-ECC RAM. 3x2TB HDD's in RAIDZ1 (ZFS filesystem) for data storage, 128GB SSD boot disk, 850W PSU etc.

I did thorough tests of my hardware, and there doesn't seem to be any problems. Also, all other software run fine - just not Lazarus. Also the Windows copy that does run fine, runs in a VM session. So if it was faulty memory or some other hardware failure (very unlikely), that VM should be affected too. My current OS (FreeBSD 9.1) is rock solid though
- no other software issues.

I suspect the issue might be related to LCL-GTK2, because often the same checkout of Lazarus runs way better under Windows than under Linux. I always try and keep FPC and Lazarus versions in sync, across all my development VM's. I never compile Lazarus with LCL-Qt, but maybe it is time I try. The one major downside of switching to LCL-QT would mean I can't have horizontal file tabs to the right of my editor. But if LCL-QT solves the problems I experience, then the right positioned tab issue is something I can live with.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Looking at Mantis, it looks as though you've reported bugs against nothing more recent than 0.9.30 and all of them were handled adequately: either resolved or closed after you didn't supply more info.

Looking at something that I reported, there were changes in the IDE post 0.9.30 that affected form display under some particularly contrived conditions (roughly translated: there was a better way to do something than I knew about). The particular one that I reported was fixed and I believe is now in 1.0.2, but there's always a possibility that there are related problems still in there.

Also some bugs are very hard to report because I can't reproduce all of them on demand. And as a developer, I know that getting a bug report that you can't reproduce is a big turn-down.

And speaking as somebody who's done a lot of support over the years, I know that the worst thing is somebody who refuses to be helped. And it's even worse when they're arrogant with it. And worst of all when all of this is for free.

I run lazarus with LCL-GTK2, and did not experience any problems lately ?

Can you send me (in private if you prefer) a list of tests I can do to reproduce the problems you have ?

Michael.

[Nod]

Only things I'd note here are that different OSes can fail in different ways: a classic was that OS/2 used to bomb on systems that ran Windows fine because (it was believed) it stressed the cache. Also I've seen a system where MemTest ran fine but it locked up doing real work, I suspected a PCI bridge problem.

I think the things to try are (a) a remote X session if you can manage it conveniently and (b) a non-root ** VNC session whether it's convenient or not :-) There are definitely issues about desktops and apps looking weird over remote or VNC connections, but at the very least this should isolate you from potential problems caused by your local X subsystem.

** By non-root, I mean VNC running as a completely separate X server. I don't mean it scraping an existing session which is the sort of thing you'd be doing in a remote support role. If necessary I can talk you through this.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

And worst of all when all of this is for free.

Please don't play the "free" card. You work on Lazarus as your open source project of choice. I work on other open source projects like tiOPF, fpGUI, OnGuard, FPTest etc. I decided to stop contributing development work to Lazarus, because I already work on enough other open source projects. I don't get paid for those either, plus I have a full time day job and a family that consumes 90% of my time.

If cost is such an issue to you, then stop working on open source projects, or start charging for your work. Or just stop reading my messages.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

apps looking weird over remote or VNC connections, but at the very least this should isolate you from potential problems caused by your local X subsystem.

That is exactly why I setup a Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS VM session. Ubuntu 10.04 was a very stable system for me. Back in the day when Ubuntu 10.04 came out, I ran that as my host OS, and Lazarus at the time run pretty nice - as far as I can remember. So the X subsystem from that Ubuntu worked pretty well.

I gave up on Ubuntu since they moved to Unity. So I have tried Mint and OpenSUSE - the latter being pretty nice, except for KDE4 (I'm not a fan). So no matter what system I now run, I always use JWM (a good no-frills X11 window manager).

Almost two month ago, I moved to FreeBSD as my host OS. All development environments were moved into different VM's. So I don't do any development work in my host OS any more. So I'm now running the same Linux (in a VM) as I did in 2010. The only difference now, is that I have a much newer Lazarus installed.

** By non-root, I mean VNC running as a completely separate X server.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a try. But first I'll switch to LCL-Qt and see how that goes over the next couple of days.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

I run lazarus with LCL-GTK2, and did not experience any problems lately ?

Are you using a released version, fixes version, or Trunk?

Can you send me (in private if you prefer) a list of tests I can do to reproduce the problems you have ?

Thanks for the offer. As I mentioned to Mark, I'll switch to LCL-Qt first for a couple of days. If that doesn't work I'll investigate further.

Now the question is, what version of Lazarus should I try, while testing LCL-Qt. Stay with the released 1.0.4? Move to the fixes branch of 1.0.4, or move to Trunk?

Regards,
- Graeme -

Trunk.

I can't advise on that.
In windows I work with 1.0.4, but daily development happens with trunk (albeit a couple of months old)

Michael.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I gave up on Ubuntu since they moved to Unity. So I have tried Mint and OpenSUSE - the latter being pretty nice, except for KDE4 (I'm not a fan).

You and me both.

> ** By non-root, I mean VNC running as a completely separate X server. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a try. But first I'll switch to LCL-Qt and see how that goes over the next couple of days.

Whatever, keep us updated rather than just stewing over it.

Why not Kubuntu then ? I've been using it for many years now, no problems.

Michael.

The fixes branch is currently well maintained.
I would suggest to start with a snapshot from fixes branch.

You can see which merges are outstanding:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_1.0_fixes_branch

I want to make two points there. The first is that you are being highly selective in your quotation: I was not referring to the project as being free (beer+speech) but to the unpaid give-and-take nature of the support.

The second is that I am most definitely not one of the core team, or even at the periphery. I've got my own interests and responsibilities, for me it's just a tool.

But that doesn't stop me from trying to play nicely with people who have invested significant time and effort into it.

It does not help when somebody comes along and says "this is crap". It does not help when somebody comes along and says "the project team is crap". It does not help when somebody comes along and says "I see somebody else is having problems which vindicates my attitude that everything's crap". So let's just try to cut the crap and find what's giving you problems, before anybody else gets screwed up. Please.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

Why not Kubuntu then ? I've been using it for many years now, no problems.

Not a KDE4 fan. It just doesn't fit my workflow, is sluggish, and basic things are too hard to accomplish.

Anyway, as a host OS goes, I think I found my ultimate favourite - FreeBSD. Rock solid system, super easy to setup, fantastic documentation, the ports system is great and couldn't be easier to use. And unlike Linux, they don't re-implement most existing technology every couple of months. The FreeBSD guys are way more consistent, and rather improve and evolve the existing technologies, which gives fantastic backwards compatibility. eg: How many sound servers has Linux already had? How many file systems? How many directory layouts? How many distros exist? All slightly different to the next. I have a commercial mail server running on a separate FreeBSD 9.1 system. The mail server software was a binary release that was compiled for FreeBSD 8, years ago. The installation, documentation and binaries are still compatible with FreeBSD 9.1

Anyway, enough about my OS choices.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Definitely something that's on my list of things to try.