How to get the fpc ide running under Mac OS X

Warning: Legacy information - no longer current

The mouse does not work in revision version 2.0.4. From version 2.1.2 revision 6226 and possibly up the mouse works.

Mandatory Requirements:

1. Apple developer tools (read XCode) and X11

2. The freepascal ide

you need: compiler, rtl, (maybe base packages, fcl and extra packages. note: fcl has been moved into packages in version 2.1.2 revision 6655), fvision (i.e. fv) and ide.

compile fv:

cd fv
make clean all

compile the ide (there is no debugger library, just neglect the resulting warning):

cd ide
make clean all

You may use fink (http://www.finkproject.org/) for the installation of freepascal.
The package fpc installs all you need including the fv units and the ide.

Optional Requirements:

due to recent updates the next two steps (installing the vga font and make it accessible in xterm) are not mandatory any longer to get at least a partially working IDE, and consequently may be skipped. You will miss the nice fpc background, for example. (;-)

1. install the vga font for xterm

download the vga font here: http://home.earthlink.net/~us5zahns/enl/vga.pcf

for more docs on changing the Xterm font look here: http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x606.html

copy the font to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/

mv your_download_dir/vga.pcf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/

check and set file permissions (you have to be root to do this):

cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/

chown root:wheel vga.pcf; chmod 444 vga.pcf

start an xterm in X11 and do:

cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/
mkfontdir
xset fp rehash

Now you should be able to start xterm with the vga font by:

xterm -font vga -r

It is useful to define this as a customized command in X11 (Menu Applications -> Customize...)

2. set the terminal type to linux

export TERM=linux

or start xterm with

xterm -font vga -r -tn linux

Without this, you may get funny characters at the position of box borders and other, similar places.
You may add this command to your bash startup file. The bash shell of xterm of X11 reads the .bashrc file in your $HOME directory and not .bash_profile. For more information on this topic read the man pages of bash or search for X11 and bash on http://www.macosxhints.com.
For more on fonts, terminals, 8bit characters, ESC codes read Terminal & Fonts.

Starting the IDE:

1. start the ide in an xterm

cd your_path/fpc/ide
./fp

In order to get Alt-x you have to press ESC and x.

For easier use you may install freepascal and the ide:

cd your_path/fpc
sudo make install
sudo make -C fv install
sudo make -C ide install

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From the Free Pascal wiki, page "How to get the fpc ide running under Mac OS X", as the Internet Archive kept it on 2022-12-16, last changed on 2020-02-07. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's Licensing page. If you have concerns about this material, message the admin.