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Mailing lists / lazarus / 2026-03

the Lazarus IDE (Linux) has been built for X11 direct, no EXTERNAL widget-set required

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robert rozee
Michael Van Canneyt wrote 17 lines
On Fri, 13 Mar 2026, robert rozee via lazarus wrote: > user 'fifr' on forum.lazarus.freepascal.org has just reported successfully > building the Lazarus IDE (for Linux) against Ardour's YTK, a static > library based upon stripped-down GTK2 source code. this has yielded an ELF > binary of the IDE that has NO external widget-set dependencies, that > should therefore run on any Linux desktop supporting X11 > [...] > there are still missing features, limitations, and bugs. but it is a start. > he has reported the size of the resulting ELF binary having grown by around > 4.1mb with YTK code statically linked in to the IDE. Your message is a little misleading. There _is_ an external dependency: ytk. It's linked statically, but the dependency exists nonetheless. When I read 'no external dependency' I expect the whole thing to be 100% object pascal, which it clearly is not. Correcter would be: less dependencies on dynamic libraries. Michael.

you are right Michael, the subject line i used was incorrect, i should have written "no EXTERNAL widget set required". but the text of my message was correct. the stripped-down GTK code, written in C, is being made a part of the ELF binary that is produced.

why would statically linking C code (YTK in this case) into the ELF binary of a Lazarus GUI application unacceptable? the end result is a single ELF binary that does not depend upon any widget-set being available on the end user's computer, which is kinda the goal!

there is also no reason why someone should not pass the YTK source code through a C-to-pascal converter, although why one would want to bother with this pointless step is beyond me.

as you will see in the lazarus forum thread, this is NOT being put forward as an alternative to getting GTK3 support up and running, but rather as "another string added to our bow".

cheers,
rob :-)

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Michael Van Canneyt
to robert rozee
robert rozee wrote 23 lines
On 2026-03-13 10:21, Michael Van Canneyt via lazarus wrote: > On Fri, 13 Mar 2026, robert rozee via lazarus wrote: >> user 'fifr' on forum.lazarus.freepascal.org has just reported successfully >> building the Lazarus IDE (for Linux) against Ardour's YTK, a static >> library based upon stripped-down GTK2 source code. this has yielded an ELF >> binary of the IDE that has NO external widget-set dependencies, that >> should therefore run on any Linux desktop supporting X11 >> [...] >> there are still missing features, limitations, and bugs. but it is a start. >> he has reported the size of the resulting ELF binary having grown by around >> 4.1mb with YTK code statically linked in to the IDE. > > Your message is a little misleading. There _is_ an external dependency: ytk. > It's linked statically, but the dependency exists nonetheless. > > When I read 'no external dependency' I expect the whole thing to be 100% > object pascal, which it clearly is not. Correcter would be: less dependencies > on dynamic libraries. Michael. you are right Michael, the subject line i used was incorrect, i should have written "no EXTERNAL widget set required". but the text of my message was correct.

That depends on your definition of external.

It seems we use a different definition of external.

Show quoted text 5 lines
the stripped-down GTK code, written in C, is being made a part of the ELF binary that is produced. why would statically linking C code (YTK in this case) into the ELF binary of a Lazarus GUI application unacceptable?

I never implied it was.

I was simply trying to phrase the actual achievement more precisely.

Michael.

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