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Installing Lazarus on Windows: what changed

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11*(Windows only)*
22
33## Using the Windows Installer
44
55By far the easiest and most common way to install Lazarus on Windows is to go to the official [Lazarus SourceForge download site](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/) select an appropriate combined FPC/Lazarus installation package, download the latest release and launch the installer.
66
77The current releases of the Windows Lazarus installer packages install very easily, and should work 'out-of-the-box'.
88
99Do not install into the standard program folder `c:\Program Files` because access to it is restricted. Moreover, it is recommended to avoid spaces in the folder name because it may confuse some tools used by Lazarus.
1010
1111If you already have another Lazarus version on your system it is recommended to keep the old version and to keep it separate from the new installation. For this purpose Lazarus offers to write its configuration files into a specific directory so that both versions can coexist. See section Preparation for the first start below.
1212
1313Upgrading can be as simple as downloading the new installer and running it. You will be taken through a typical Windows installation wizard to install the FPC compiler and FPC source within the same directory structure as Lazarus IDE, and Lazarus should launch and operate without significant problems, provided you have **uninstalled** any previous version of Lazarus and/or FPC which was not installed with a recent version fo the Windows installer (older installations can often be found in the C:\pp directory).
1414
1515> **Tip:** It's perhaps a good idea to reboot your Windows system after you have installed Lazarus and before you try to install additional Lazarus components such as zeoslib for example.
1616
1717## Installing Lazarus on a Portable USB device
1818
1919It is even possible to install the whole Lazarus/FPC package on a portable USB drive or memory stick (capacity at least 256 MB), for use in environments where you are not allowed to install software on your Windows workstation or where you do not have administrator privileges. You do have to be very careful about adjusting the paths in the compiler and environment options and the `fpc.cfg` file.
2020
2121Helpfully there is a third-party Lazarus application [startLazarusPortable](https://github.com/JoeJoeTV/startLazarusPortable) available on GitHub in both source and compiled form to take care of this for you. startLazarusPortable is a launcher application that starts Lazarus from a folder/portable USB device and makes all the necessary configuration changes for you.
2222
2323See also [this forum post](https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,46436.msg393696.html#msg393696) which (as of early February 2020) contains a fix for when you have added some packages to the Lazarus IDE from the online repository.
2424
2525## Installing Lazarus from sources on Windows
2626
2727The following instructions are for both SubVersioN and Git repository of the Lazarus IDE. If you are not planning to follow the development source, just want a one-off, you can download a zip file of the Lazarus development source.
2828
2929It is assumed that the following installations will go into folders appropriately named `c:\Lazarus-fixes22` or `c:\Lazarus-dev`. Of course any other folder names can be used provided that they do not contain spaces or non-ASCII characters, and that the folders are fully writeable by the user. Do NOT install into `c:\Program files` which is not fully writeable by a user.
3030
3131### Getting the Lazarus sources by using TortoiseSVN
3232
3333The easiest way to work with svn is by using the TortoiseSVN application (https://tortoisesvn.net/index.de.html). Install this application if you do not have it already. It adds short-cuts to the Explorer context menu from which you can work with svn easily.
3434
3535To download the Lazarus fixes 2.2 sources create the folder `c:\Lazarus-fixes22` and right-click on it in Explorer. In the context menu open the command *SVN Checkout...*. Enter the *URL of the SVN repository* in the corresponding box. This is:
3636
3737- https://github.com/fpc/Lazarus/branches/fixes_2_2 for the fixes version (adjust the version number in the `fixes22` folder name for the current version).
3838
3939Make sure that the *Checkout directory* box contains the directory in which you want to have the new Lazarus version (`c:\Lazarus-fixes22` in our example). After pressing OK the source files are downloaded which will take some time.
4040
4141Note: svn checkout of the development version (aka trunk in svn or or main in git) is problematical due to an svn bug. See below using command line svn.
4242
4343### Getting the Lazarus sources from the command line
4444
4545Alternatively you can also download the sources from the command line if you have the command line version of SVN (https://subversion.apache.org/packages.html#windows) or GIT (https://gitforwindows.org/) on your system.
4646
4747#### Downloading Lazarus "fixes" version source
4848
4949[[Lazarus 2.2 fixes branch|Details of the fixes]] included in the Lazarus 2.2 fixes version. Here are the steps to follow to download the fixes source:
5050
5151- Open a command prompt window
5252
5353- Create a folder for the new Lazarus:
5454
55-` md c:\Lazarus-fixes22`
55+```text
56+ md c:\Lazarus-fixes22
57+```
5658
5759- Change into this folder:
5860
59-` cd c:\Lazarus-fixes22`
61+```text
62+ cd c:\Lazarus-fixes22
63+```
6064
6165Using git:
6266
63-` git clone -b fixes_2_2 https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus.git .`
67+```text
68+ git clone -b fixes_2_2 https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus.git .
69+```
6470
6571Using svn:
6672
67-` svn checkout https://github.com/fpc/Lazarus/branches/fixes_2_2 .`
73+```text
74+ svn checkout https://github.com/fpc/Lazarus/branches/fixes_2_2 .
75+```
6876
6977- The download will take some time. Be patient.
7078
7179#### Downloading Lazarus development version source
7280
7381Here are the steps to follow to download the development (was known as "trunk" in SVN; now known as "main" in GIT) version source of the Lazarus IDE using svn or git:
7482
7583- Open a command prompt window
7684
7785- Create a folder for the new Lazarus:
7886
79-` md c:\Lazarus-dev`
87+```text
88+ md c:\Lazarus-dev
89+```
8090
8191- Change into this folder:
8292
83-` cd c:\Lazarus-dev`
93+```text
94+ cd c:\Lazarus-dev
95+```
8496
8597Using git:
8698
87-` git clone -b main https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus.git .`
99+```text
100+ git clone -b main https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus.git .
101+```
88102
89103Using svn (due to an svn bug, this is a two step process):
90104
91-` svn checkout --depth files https://github.com/fpc/Lazarus/branches .`\
92-` svn update --set-depth infinity main`
105+```text
106+ svn checkout --depth files https://github.com/fpc/Lazarus/branches .
107+ svn update --set-depth infinity main
108+```
93109
94110- The download will take some time. Be patient.
95111
96112### Getting the Lazarus sources from a snapshot
97113
98114A snapshot of the Lazarus development version source is available from the official GitLab repository. You can download it through the Gitlab web interface at <https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus>. Alternatively, you can fetch it from <https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus/-/archive/main/lazarus-main.zip>.
99115
100116Other, previously available snapshot 'servers', are mentioned here [[Lazarus Snapshots Downloads|snapshot servers]]. Not recommended.
101117
102118Unzip the downloaded archive to the folder in which you want Lazarus to be installed, eg `c:\lazarus-dev`.
103119
104120### Building Lazarus
105121
106122Prerequisite for building Lazarus is that a recent FPC installation must be available. "Recent version" means:
107123
108124- the current FPC release;
109125- the previous release version;
110126- the FPC fixes version; or
111127- the FPC development version.
112128
113129If you already have a Lazarus release installation on your disk - here you can find the FPC in the equally named folder of the installation directory. Make sure that the FPC version number is adequate. If not, install a newer Lazarus release (which is always recommended). Or, of course, you can also install FPC separately. You are also strongly recommended to install the FPC source as well, not absolutely essential but very handy.
114130
115131You should also be aware that the bitness of the FPC determines the bitness of the Lazarus IDE and the bitness of the applications that you will create. So, when your fpc.exe resides in a folder `i386_win32` the IDE (and your applications) will be 32-bit. When the folder is `x86_64-win64` the IDE (and your applications) will be 64-bit.
116132
117133- Remember the full path to the folder containing `fpc.exe` and use it in the following batch file.
118134- Change to the folder into which you downloaded the source files and create a batch file with the following content
119135
120136```dos
121137set path=c:\freepascal\bin\x86_64-win64
122138:: Of course change this path variable to the path of your FPC compiler
123139make bigide
124140```
125141
126142- Executing this batch file will build a Lazarus containing all the basic packages, like in a release version. (Of course you must install any other third-party packages by yourself later.)
127143- if using Powershell, try these commands (this time assuming your FPC is in c:\FPC\3.2.2 - typical of a recent install) -
128144
129145```dos
130146$env:PATH="c:\FPC\3.2.2\bin\i386-win32"
131147make bigide
132148```
133149
134150- Since the Lazarus development version (trunk in svn, main in git) is not "stable" it may happen that the "bigide" version cannot be build due to an error in one of the standard packages. In this case it may be helpful to know that the basic IDE (with LCL only) can be built by using the `make` command without the `bigide` parameter:
135151
136152```dos
137153set path=c:\freepascal\bin\x86_64-win64
138154:: Of course change this path variable to the path of your FPC compiler
139155make
140156```
141157
142158- Because the Lazarus IDE by default links to a dll-call "CreateToolhelp32Snapshot", which does not exist on the Win9x platform, the IDE will not run on Win9x out of the box. In order to make it run you have to rebuild the IDE with `make -dWIN9XPLATFORM bigide`.
143159- Compilation will take some time again. At the end, the new IDE is ready, but you should not start it yet -- read the next section first.
144160
145161### Preparation for the first start
146162
147163Before you start the new IDE you should make sure that it does not interfere with your current other Lazarus installation(s). For this purpose you must have a separate directory for the Lazarus configuration files, maybe `c:\LazConfigs\trunk`. Lazarus writes is configuration settings to this folder if you open the `lazarus.exe` with the argument `--primary-config-path=c:\LazConfigs\dev`, or shorter, `--pcp=c:\LazConfigs\dev`. When this parameter is missing the configuration files are read from and written to the default folder in `c:\users\<your_name>\appdata\lazarus` which will very probably change settings of the other installation.
148164
149165Since it is easy to forget this command line parameter it is highly recommended to add a file `lazarus.cfg` to the lazarus installation folder (the folder containing `lazarus.exe`) in which the pcp parameter is listed. This is also how the Lazarus release versions handle secondary installations.
150166
151167`echo "--pcp=c:\LazConfigs\trunk" > lazarus.cfg``enter`
152168
153169Starting Lazarus in the directory containing that `lazarus.cfg` file will ensure Lazarus keeps its config files in the nominated directory.
154170
155171Alternatively you can also start the IDE from the desktop short-cut which has the `--pcp=...` as an argument.
156172
157173### First start of the IDE
158174
159175When you start the new IDE for the first time probably there will be an error message saying that the FPC and the debugger cannot be found. In this error dialog, navigate to the folder which you had used as the path to build the IDE, and select the `fpc.exe`. As for the debugger, navigate to the `mingw` folder of your Lazarus release installation (or install gdb separately) and select the `gdb.exe`. There may also be a message about an issue with the fppkg configuration - click "Restore fppkg configuration" to resolve this. If subsequent error messages appear they can be ignored.
160176
161177Now the IDE will be happy and you can start using your new Lazarus trunk (or fixes) IDE.
162178
163179### Updating the installed version
164180
165181It is the advantage of a version-control system such as git and svn that it is very easy to update the installed source version with any subsequent changes.
166182
167183#### svn
168184
169185- If you used TortoiseSVN right-click on the installation folder of this Lazarus and select *SVN Update* from the context menu.
170186- If you prefer the console change directory (cd) to the installation folder and type `svn update`, or `svn up`
171187
172188#### git
173189
174190If you used git:
175191
176192- Open a command prompt
177193- cd to the installation folder and type `git pull`
178194
179195The download now is very fast because only the differences to the local installation must be fetched.
180196
181197Then start the IDE, go to *Tools* \> *Build Lazarus with profile...* and recompile the IDE. It may happen that compilation aborts with some error; in this case go to *Tools* \> *Configure Build Lazarus*, select *Clean all* and *Switch after building to automatically* in the "Clean up" box, and click *Build*.
182198
183199### Help: The new IDE does not start
184200
185201In very rare cases the new sources contain a fatal error so that the IDE does not start successfully.
186202
187203For this case you must know that the IDE always keeps a backup copy, called `lazarus.exe.old`. Simply delete the newly created `lazarus.exe` and rename `lazarus.exe.old` to `lazarus.exe`. Now you are back to work, at least with the old version.
188204
189205Try the installation later again, usually such catastrophic bugs are soon detected, reported and fixed.
190206
191207If you used TortoiseSVN you may want to right-click on the Lazarus installation folder and select *SVN Show Log* from the context menu to see the commit notes of the recent changes and to learn whether the bug already has been fixed.
192208
193209If you used command line git, you can change to the source folder and type `git log ``|`` more` to see the commit notes of the recent changes and to learn whether the bug already has been fixed.
194210
195211### What does the *bigide* `make` argument do?
196212
197213## Multiple Lazarus installs
198214
199215Please see [[Multiple Lazarus]] for details on having more than one Lazarus version installed on one system. We cover issues that can arise due to multiple Lazarus installs here, because they can also happen when installing over a previous version.
200216
201217## Troubleshooting
202218
203219Troubleshooting details that should (hopefully) be applicable across platforms may be found in the article [[Installation Troubleshooting]].
204220
205221## Lazarus FAQ
206222
207223The Lazarus FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions - page is available [[Lazarus Faq|here]].
208224
209225## Installing old versions
210226
211227See [[Installation hints for old versions]]
212228
213229## See also
214230
215231- [[Lazarus Installer|Creating your own Lazarus Windows installer]]
216232
217233---
218234*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Installing Lazarus on Windows", as it stood on 2022-01-13 after a change by Trev, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. 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](/wiki-contact).*
219235Category: FPC
220236Category: Install
221237Category: Lazarus

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