Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On Tuesday 18 December 2012 19:07:47 Florian Klämpfl wrote: Am 17.12.2012 10:36, schrieb Graeme Geldenhuys: Hi, Any FPC developer willing to comment on the status of some of these issues (that have been years overdue)? It narrows basically down to the fact that fpc lacks developers and contributors, or do I miss something? Don't you think after more than a year of decision-making about Unicode it is necessary for a serious compiler to actually make and communicate a decision? Don't you think for a serious compiler there should be communicated design goals and the missing pieces and necessary boring improvements should be done before adding sexy new things? Or is FPC simply a playground for the FPC-developers? Then that should be communicated too and I probably was wrong to invest so much time into the development of MSEide+MSEgui. Martin ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On Mon, 17 Dec 2012, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: Hi, Any FPC developer willing to comment on the status of some of these issues (that have been years overdue)? For some reason this thread ended up in my spam box. Hence the late reply. As for the question: I've planned to do some work on the unicode string type. Then: Please don't bother obfuscating names, the mailing lists are public: - John Doe 1 is Martin Schreiber himself, - John Doe 2 is Graeme Geldenhuys. Concerning Fighting with Michael or Marco: Martin has virtually sole control over MSEide-MSEgui. In that position, he does not need to compromise. This is quite different from the situation in Free Pascal: From our perspective, Martin is simply impossible to work with. It's either his way or not at all, always has been so. In the last discussion I've gone out of my way to find solutions for his problems that are acceptable for our own goals, and found them too. I even implemented some. In the end he just closed the discussion with I don't like this approach. I have no problem with that, but then be honest and do not put the blame on us. I also sometimes must compromise in the FPC team. I also do not like all decisions. I also do not want all the latest Delphi features. But we are cooperating in a group, and then compromise is necessary. If Martin would be more cooperative and sometimes accepted a compromise, we would probably have solved many of the issues that are bothering him a long time ago, simply because we'd have more manpower and he'd be included in the FPC core group. The first attempt to do so, on the database design, failed for exactly the reasons outlined above: Compromise was not acceptable. A pity, because there are lots of ideas in MSEgui that I like and plan to copy, time permitting. That is a waste of time and double work that could have been avoided, but alas... Let us not forget that FPC is gcc+libc+gnu-binutils combined. All those projects have entire corporations backing them up if need be. We do not. FPC is a small team consisting of volunteers who do this after hours. We do not get payed for this. It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting. Michael. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On 21/12/12 10:15, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting. I was simply bringing some of those questions (which I had too) to light. Unicode has been under development for many years, and has come to a halt - with no final decisions being made. This is very frustrating for those using FPC. And even if we wanted to contribute in that regard, how could we, if the FPC team itself doesn't know what it wants. I would also like to point out that I am well aware that FPC is a part time project for you guys. I never demanded anything with my original post, simply asking what the progress was. In the same breath, you guys work on FPC - that's your hobby project. Others work on Lazarus, MSEide, fpGUI, tiOPF, FPTest, FP Debugger, OnGuard, etc etc. So comments like Florian's - suggesting that if you want a feature, implement it your self is often not an option. I'm skilled in certain programming, definitely not compiler design. So it seems quite logical to leave such compiler work to those that know how to do it, or that are already familiar with the code base. I do contribute to the FPC project where I can, eg like in the fpdoc tool, documentation updates etc. This might mean jack-shit to somebody like Florian, but we are not all compiler designers, and I'm already swamped with other open-source projects I work on. Anyway, good to hear that Unicode progress might actually happen. Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On Fri, 21 Dec 2012, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: On 21/12/12 10:15, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting. I was simply bringing some of those questions (which I had too) to light. Unicode has been under development for many years, and has come to a halt - with no final decisions being made. This is very frustrating for those using FPC. And even if we wanted to contribute in that regard, how could we, if the FPC team itself doesn't know what it wants. It does. We know what to do. What we lack, is time. Status currently: - Inoussa has made a native unicode string manager. A large effort. There were some issues with licensing, namely the unicode.org files are under license. We tried to get these resolved, but there was never an answer. This took time. - There was waiting for the merge of the JavaVM branch to trunk. It contains several parts needed to get the codepage aware string working fully (notably the ability to specify what the 'string' keyword actually means) All that is left to do is make the unicode string manager part of RTL, and create the unicode-string RTL. This is a non-trivial task, which takes time and needs to be worked on preferably in one fell swoop. Do not underestimate this. The RTL in trunk will probably be highly instable during that period. After that there will be 2 RTLs: 1. The classical RTL, compatible with what you have now. 2. The unicode-string RTL which will use the namespaces of Delphi. There is no other way to implement it without breaking backwards compatibility and a reasonable amount of keeping up with Delphi. (and at the same time not have 4 RTLs: unicode/not unicode vs. namespaces/no namespaces) I would also like to point out that I am well aware that FPC is a part time project for you guys. I never demanded anything with my original post, simply asking what the progress was. I understand. What made me react is the original rant in your forwarded mail. I'm fed up of being treated like a stubborn bastard, opposed to change. No, we are not opposed to change. But Yes, we have our own goals. A reasonable amount of Delphi compatibility happens to be one of them. That may not matter to Martin, but it does to us. So compromise will be needed, and any proposed change is always viewed in the light of our own goals. People that want to help with dynamically loadable packages, are always welcome. But the subject is NOT easy. Any solution will have to work on ALL platforms. In particular, your contributions in any area you can help with, were and are valued. Michael. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On 21/12/12 12:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: We know what to do. What we lack, is time. Status currently: Thanks for the update. Most of what you mentioned was unknown to any person outside the FPC core team. So to us outsiders, it seems like progress has halted. Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
Graeme Geldenhuys gra...@geldenhuys.co.uk hat am 21. Dezember 2012 um 13:49 geschrieben: On 21/12/12 12:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: We know what to do. What we lack, is time. Status currently: Thanks for the update. Most of what you mentioned was unknown to any person outside the FPC core team. Huh? I'm not part of the FPC core team. I knew all that from the mailing lists. Granted, with all the lists, chats, forums, repositories and trackers it's hard to know the current state. It would be nice if someone of the FPC team could update the status page: http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_Unicode_support So to us outsiders, it seems like progress has halted. Mattias ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
[fpc-devel] Re: Building android-i386 [Was: Re: Building the Android branch]
Am 20.12.2012 17:11, schrieb Thomas Schatzl: Hi, On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 16:33 +0100, Sven Barth wrote: Am 20.12.2012 10:19, schrieb Thomas Schatzl: - if you are really interested about doing Android development, I recommend getting a developer board. The emulator is really slow. Even fast developer boards are really cheap now, e.g. quad-core 1.4Ghz ARMv7 with 1GB RAM for 70 USD (www.hardkernel.com , search for Odroid-U). This device is actually pretty decent. Otherwise use an unused phone. Currently I'm mostly checking what would be necessary to get our Windows Mobile application (more or less) running on Android using LCL-CustomDrawn. For these tests the emulator and maybe my own Phone should be enough for now. If it's only android you want to evaluate, you may want to give the i386-android target which should also work with that branch a try. This should work if you do not need OpenGLES or something hardware specific. I do not actually know, but there should be i386/android simulator images available. Performance of those should be much better. :) I now tried to rebuild for i386. This is the command I used (I already replaced GOLD by the BFD linker): make all OS_TARGET=android CPU_TARGET=i386 BINUTILSPREFIX=i686-linux-android- CROSSBINDIR=D:\Android\android-ndk-r8c\toolchains\x86-4.6\prebuilt\windows\bin CROSSOPT=-FlD:\Android\android-ndk-r8c\platforms\android-14\arch-x86\usr\lib make clean crosszipinstall OS_TARGET=android CPU_TARGET=i386 CROSSBINDIR=[...]/android-ndk-r8c/toolchains/x86-4.6/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin BINUTILSPREFIX=i686-linux-android- OPT= CROSSOPT= -Cfsse3 -Fl[...]/android-ndk-r8c/platforms/android-14/arch-x86/usr/lib PP=[...]/targetandroid/ppc386 (compiling from linux-i386 to android-i386) went through here. Did you make sure that the correct fpcmake is used? (and take care of the bfd/gold issue). The fpcmake problem is taken care of since the last time as I replaced my 2.6.0 fpcmake by the one from the Android branch. Also I replaced the linker with the BFD one from the beginning. Also I tried the 4.4.3 and the 4.6 binutils. The only difference (after adding -Cfsse3 -Cppentium3) is now that I'm doing this on Windows. I'll retry this at the weekend on Linux. What puzzles me though is the File format not recognized when the linker tries to open the pp.o file... Regards, Sven ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Re: Building android-i386 [Was: Re: Building the Android branch]
In our previous episode, Sven Barth said: Also I replaced the linker with the BFD one from the beginning. Also I tried the 4.4.3 and the 4.6 binutils. The only difference (after adding -Cfsse3 -Cppentium3) is now that I'm doing this on Windows. I'll retry this at the weekend on Linux. What puzzles me though is the File format not recognized when the linker tries to open the pp.o file... What does file say about that file? ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Re: Building android-i386 [Was: Re: Building the Android branch]
Am 21.12.2012 15:58, schrieb Marco van de Voort: In our previous episode, Sven Barth said: Also I replaced the linker with the BFD one from the beginning. Also I tried the 4.4.3 and the 4.6 binutils. The only difference (after adding -Cfsse3 -Cppentium3) is now that I'm doing this on Windows. I'll retry this at the weekend on Linux. What puzzles me though is the File format not recognized when the linker tries to open the pp.o file... What does file say about that file? It will be hard to have file say anything as I'm - as I wrote - currently doing this on Windows. :) Regards, Sven ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Re: Building android-i386 [Was: Re: Building the Android branch]
In our previous episode, Sven Barth said: this at the weekend on Linux. What puzzles me though is the File format not recognized when the linker tries to open the pp.o file... What does file say about that file? It will be hard to have file say anything as I'm - as I wrote - currently doing this on Windows. :) Cygwin has file. There are also standalone (VC compiled) versions, but I don't know how recent they are. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting. Cutting out a whole lot of crap: as somebody very much on the periphery of the project, I'm disappointed to see sentiments of this tenor being aired in public. First, in traditional debate it's not considered necessary to be quite so explicit naming names: anybody who follows the project would probably understand certain persons are difficult to get on with because they have their own agenda entirely adequately. Second, there are a number of other projects and commercial products with which we are in friendly competition. If there's internal friction, there's no need to give them a grandstand view. I'd suggest some sort of resolution mechanism is needed, where somebody can request permission to address the core developers on a private list, and the core developers can call somebody onto the carpet. Provided that the public was aware that attempts were being made to resolve something off-list, and provided that a summary was posted when the dust had settled, I think something like that would be adequately transparent. Me, I've no complaints about the project except for the difficulty of working out the details of the compiler etc. Apart from that, happy Midwinter Solstice everyone. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
Am 21.12.2012 09:23, schrieb Martin Schreiber: On Tuesday 18 December 2012 19:07:47 Florian Klämpfl wrote: Am 17.12.2012 10:36, schrieb Graeme Geldenhuys: Hi, Any FPC developer willing to comment on the status of some of these issues (that have been years overdue)? It narrows basically down to the fact that fpc lacks developers and contributors, or do I miss something? Don't you think after more than a year of decision-making about Unicode it is necessary for a serious compiler to actually make and communicate a decision? See mail from Michael. Don't you think for a serious compiler there should be communicated design goals The mission goal of FPC is: develop an open source pascal compiler written in pascal in a community effort. and the missing pieces and necessary boring improvements should be done before adding sexy new things? Maybe people should indeed first work on the compiler instead of developing another gui and ide. I cannot tell you neither any other developer what they have to develop. We could close down all write accesses to fpc svn till the features you need are developed but I fear you won't get them either this way. People would just fork fpc or fpc would die. So what do you propose? Or is FPC simply a playground for the FPC-developers? Then that should be communicated too and I probably was wrong to invest so much time into the development of MSEide+MSEgui. If nobody is interested in features you need, bad luck for you, you have three possibilities: develop them yourself, pay somebody to develop them or use another compiler. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
Am 21.12.2012 12:58, schrieb Graeme Geldenhuys: On 21/12/12 10:15, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting. I was simply bringing some of those questions (which I had too) to light. Unicode has been under development for many years, and has come to a halt - with no final decisions being made. This is very frustrating for those using FPC. And even if we wanted to contribute in that regard, how could we, if the FPC team itself doesn't know what it wants. I would also like to point out that I am well aware that FPC is a part time project for you guys. I never demanded anything with my original post, simply asking what the progress was. In the same breath, you guys work on FPC - that's your hobby project. Others work on Lazarus, MSEide, fpGUI, tiOPF, FPTest, FP Debugger, OnGuard, etc etc. So comments like Florian's - suggesting that if you want a feature, implement it your self is often not an option. I'm skilled in certain programming, definitely not compiler design. So it seems quite logical to leave such compiler work to those that know how to do it, Well, then you depend on those people. or that are already familiar with the code base. Believe me, the compiler contains a lot of code I never have touched or even seen ... documentation updates etc. This might mean jack-shit to somebody like Florian, but we are not all compiler designers, Me neither, I'am electrical engineer and twenty years ago I needed a 32 bit pascal compiler. and I'm already swamped with other open-source projects I work on. This applies to everybody I guess :) ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On 2012-12-21 14:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: - Inoussa has made a native unicode string manager. A large effort. Is this code publicly available somewhere? ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On Fri, 21 Dec 2012, ListMember wrote: On 2012-12-21 14:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: - Inoussa has made a native unicode string manager. A large effort. Is this code publicly available somewhere? It's attached to a bugreport in Mantis somewhere. Michael. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On 2012-12-21 22:29, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012, ListMember wrote: On 2012-12-21 14:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: - Inoussa has made a native unicode string manager. A large effort. Is this code publicly available somewhere? It's attached to a bugreport in Mantis somewhere. Michael. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel I did a search for 'Inoussa' and I got these 4 items --all closed. Neither one contains any significantly sized attachment. cpnewstr's charray_to_ansistr conversion is not ok (due to codepage parameter) http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=17754 Access Violation when assigning Self to local interface Reference in constructor http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=16901 Apache Bindings - apr.pas http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=11460 Memory leak with interfaces http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=7281 Can you (or someone else, of course) think of a better search string to locate it? ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
Am 21.12.2012 22:20 schrieb ListMember listmem...@letterboxes.org: On 2012-12-21 22:29, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012, ListMember wrote: On 2012-12-21 14:26, Michael Van Canneyt wrote: - Inoussa has made a native unicode string manager. A large effort. Is this code publicly available somewhere? It's attached to a bugreport in Mantis somewhere. Michael. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel I did a search for 'Inoussa' and I got these 4 items --all closed. Neither one contains any significantly sized attachment. cpnewstr's charray_to_ansistr conversion is not ok (due to codepage parameter) http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=17754 Access Violation when assigning Self to local interface Reference in constructor http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=16901 Apache Bindings - apr.pas http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=11460 Memory leak with interfaces http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=7281 Can you (or someone else, of course) think of a better search string to locate it? Go to View Issues, click on the + before the search bix, click in the appearing entries in the top left for reporter and select the user Inoussa OUEDRAOGO in the list (strangely the user exists twice, I used the first one) and click on Apply Filter. The second entry should be the correct one (you should be able to judge this from the issue's description). Regards, Sven ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status
On 2012-12-22 00:27, Sven Barth wrote: Am 21.12.2012 22:20 schrieb ListMember listmem...@letterboxes.org mailto:listmem...@letterboxes.org: Can you (or someone else, of course) think of a better search string to locate it? Go to View Issues, click on the + before the search bix, click in the appearing entries in the top left for reporter and select the user Inoussa OUEDRAOGO in the list (strangely the user exists twice, I used the first one) and click on Apply Filter. The second entry should be the correct one (you should be able to judge this from the issue's description). Thank you for that detailed navigation; I got it now. [ http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=22909 ] Does anyone know if the license issue has been discussed in any public maillist/wiki etc. Reason I am asking is this: Having read (now and several times in the past) unicode.org's license [ http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html#Exhibit1 ] I simply cannot see what it is that is so (or, rather, at all) restrictive. ___ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
