On 16-10-2024 11:07, Nikolay Nikolov via fpc-pascal wrote:
On 10/16/24 2:07 AM, Rainer Stratmann via fpc-pascal wrote:
At the Lazarus Congress in Cologne in October 2024, it ended up being
very
interesting. An important question came up.
Why are no new users coming to Lazarus/Freepascal?
Why do we find it so difficult?
How can we get new, younger users to come to us?
The same questions came up over a year ago at a Freepascal/Lazarus
meeting in
Backnang.
I have some answers:
- The official Freepascal website doesn't look like the project is
very lively.
Maybe another redesign is necessary? Unfortunately, good compiler
developers often aren't very good at web design, and someone has to
contribute this. Look at the gcc or the llvm site, it's even worse. :)
https://gcc.gnu.org/
https://llvm.org/
Or maybe, it's better? I don't know. Maybe explain what do you mean by
"doesn't look like the project is very lively". Maybe we should post
updates more often?
- Lazarus looks very complicated with its many windows. And it is also
relatively complicated to understand and use. There are too many
options that
are too nested.
Kinda agree, at least for beginners and for small programs. How about
the console IDE? I sometimes prefer it for small programs. But for
large programs, nothing beats Lazarus.
- Crosscompiling: The compiler file name is hidden in Tools -
Settings instead
of in the project settings. I found this out after some time. Since
it was
nowhere to be found in the project settings I first thought it might
be hard-
coded!
- Linux: All relevant files (executable files, configuration files,
source code,
etc.) are scattered all over the Linux system. This is very
complicated again.
If Lazarus/Freepascal were a Linux system program it would make
sense. But it
is NOT a Linux system program. The chance that it will be used by
several
users on a multi-user system is close to zero.
Free Pascal is exactly as "scattered" all over the Linux system, as
gcc, clang, rust and pretty much any other compiler. How is this
exactly a problem, since all major distros ship fpc as an official
package and it is used to build other packages as well? It's not
exactly difficult to do e.g. on Fedora:
sudo dnf install fpc
or
sudo dnf install lazarus
Even strange distros like NixOS ship fpc. I'm sorry, but I don't get
it, how is this a problem? Maybe for people who are new and want to
get into FPC development and want to build it from source? But
definitely not for new users.
If I do a "apt-cache policy lazarus" it looks like it is an old version
that get installed.
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ apt-cache policy lazarus
lazarus:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 2.2.6+dfsg2-2
Version table:
2.2.6+dfsg2-2 500
500 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.com/raspbian bookworm/main
armhf Packages
Carsten
_______________________________________________
fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org
https://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
