Write Once Compile Nowhere!

[Troodon]

Well, I think that effort should be taken to simplify Lazarus+FPC installation of various Linux distribution, because, currently it sucks.

Installation on Ubuntu and SLED (SuSE) are straightforward, using deb and rpm packages, respectivelly. These are the most popular Linux desktop distros anyway. There are too many Linux distributions to develop and test specific installation packages for all of them.

[vfclists]

In a case like this the best thing to do would be to look up the source for building the package, download it and test it, then send in a patch or push it back to the repository.

Well, I think that effort should be taken to simplify Lazarus+FPC installation of various Linux distribution, because, currently it sucks.

[alejol0]

I think that just hollering "Nothing works" is blaming others for your own errors as I use Lazarus for some two years now and all installed components are working as expected.
Of course every now and then I too think a component is faulty, but almost always it turns out that it's me and not the component that screwed things up.

A better way to use this forum would be to just ask for help and give a detailed description of your problems. My experience is there is always a Lazarus guru somewhere who knows the answer and is willing to help, but being polite instead of just plain negative sometimes helps to get that support.

 
Jan
(a most times very satisfied Lazarus user)

I am in agree with mrmikehicks.
I have put bugs in bugtracker, have posted in this forum, and nothing happens.
The problem with ListView in Linux and Mac OS has years and nobody corrects it.
For controls in Linux you do not have help here.
The Lazarus installation in Linux sucks. Always a missing library, always
a "not implemented" feature.
Why the Lazarus team do not provide a simple executable installer
for all Linux in x86 architecture, with *ALL* the stuff, like in Windows?
 In Windows Lazarus components works.
I think that Lazarus developers do not care about Linux programers.

[alejol0]

OK, buy Delphi and then show us the screenshots of your Delphi program running on any other platform than Win32. :-)

OR

You should use the bug report

OR

Just try to develop something for Lazarus instead of complaining about other people's work.

It is difficult to make a build if the bricks are broken.
And if the basic building blocks of lazarus do not work in Linux,
is very little wath one can do.
Lazarus is Windows driven, and partially works in Linux.

[Troodon]

The problem with ListView in Linux and Mac OS has years and nobody corrects it.
For controls in Linux you do not have help here.
The Lazarus installation in Linux sucks. Always a missing library, always
a "not implemented" feature.
Why the Lazarus team do not provide a simple executable installer
for all Linux in x86 architecture, with *ALL* the stuff, like in Windows?
 In Windows Lazarus components works.
I think that Lazarus developers do not care about Linux programers.

I understand your frustration. You have to consider a few facts though:

- In terms of numbers, only around 5% of desktop users choose Mac OS X and it doesn't come cheap. They are mostly users, not developers. You will find Mac OS consumers mostly in the US and the EU and the majority of them are professionals working in graphics or multimedia design.

- Also in terms of numbers, only 1-2% of desktop users choose Linux, mostly because it's free. There are hundreds of Linux distributions. Linux is not an OS, it is a collection of OSes. Linux is like a car: you generally cannot move parts from one car make/model to another. That is why, to develop an application for "Linux" it is better to focus on the most popular (and tested and supported) desktop distributions, i.e. Ubuntu and SLED. Note that I did not include OpenSUSE and Fedora on this list because they are by definition "bleeding edge" distros, that is, they are potentially unstable, which makes debugging applications even more complicated if not impossible.

- Linux has this fenomenal feature called package management. What it does is, when you install a package it tells you if a dependency is missing and will get it for you. Despite that, many airheads will insist on installing Lazarus/FPC from source. Recompile all and everything. It is not surprizing that they will find missing development (but not necessarily runtime) libraries and such. There are "hunters" and there are "weapon makers". If you are a "hunter", that is, an application developer, then install Lazarus/FPC from the packages provided: debs for Ubuntu/Debian and rpms for SuSE/Fedora/whatever. There are also daily builds if you like living dangerously. But if you think you are a "weapon maker" and you really want to install from source then you are supposed to know what you are doing.

- Whether we like it or not, Windows remains the largest software market and application development field. There is a reason why Delphi has been available for Windows only.

I think Lazarus/FPC developers do care about Linux but they are realistic in setting their priorities and allocating resources.

[marcov]

Lazarus always has been about Linux, the Linux port existed for years before the win32 widgetset came around.

GTK2 is just limited and buggy.

Note that as far as Linux is concerned, IMHO a difference should be made between packaging (for which the distributions are primarily reponsible), and the functionality (which IMHo is not that bad)

[Marc]

GTK2 is just limited and buggy.

Its not gkt2, but our gtk2 widgetset. Due to limited manpower the gtk2 interface was derived from gtk1. gtk1 is very limited.

The gtk1 widgetset was also the first implemented widgetset. While completing the lcl the implementation of the widgetset evolved. Which means with the current knowledge widgetsets as QT or Carbon/Coca are at the 3rd generation of implementation, while gtk2 got stuck at 2. There is simply to much code to convert to gen 3. (windows is btw also still at 2)

[Troodon]

Which means with the current knowledge widgetsets as QT or Carbon/Coca are at the 3rd generation of implementation, while gtk2 got stuck at 2. There is simply to much code to convert to gen 3. (windows is btw also still at 2)

Thank you, that's interesting information. It suggests that using Qt across all platforms might be a benefit at this time.

[alejol0]

- Linux has this fenomenal feature called package management. What it does is, when you install a package it tells you if a dependency is missing and will get it for you. Despite that, many airheads will insist on installing Lazarus/FPC from source. Recompile all and everything. It is not surprizing that they will find missing development (but not necessarily runtime) libraries and such. There are "hunters" and there are "weapon makers". If you are a "hunter", that is, an application developer, then install Lazarus/FPC from the packages provided: debs for Ubuntu/Debian and rpms for SuSE/Fedora/whatever. There are also daily builds if you like living dangerously. But if you think you are a "weapon maker" and you really want to install from source then you are supposed to know what you are doing.

Well, I am a simple user of Lazarus as a programming tool. In the past, I have worked with PDP11, VAX, DOS. And when Windows appears, I have thougt "this is the real way to do things". I do not understand why in XXI century we need to use cryptic commands to install anything. When I need to install Lazarus from scratch, this is because I have used Puppy Linux; nobody was making a simple installable version of Lazarus for Puppy, only recently you can get a .sfs that works.

It is my ask for Lazarus developers: please, make REAL installers for Linux. And, please, make Lazarus updating simple, within the Lazarus IDE.

[jhmos]

- Linux has this fenomenal feature called package management. What it does is, when you install a package it tells you if a dependency is missing and will get it for you. Despite that, many airheads will insist on installing Lazarus/FPC from source. Recompile all and everything. It is not surprizing that they will find missing development (but not necessarily runtime) libraries and such. There are "hunters" and there are "weapon makers". If you are a "hunter", that is, an application developer, then install Lazarus/FPC from the packages provided: debs for Ubuntu/Debian and rpms for SuSE/Fedora/whatever. There are also daily builds if you like living dangerously. But if you think you are a "weapon maker" and you really want to install from source then you are supposed to know what you are doing.

Well, I am a simple user of Lazarus as a programming tool. In the past, I have worked with PDP11, VAX, DOS. And when Windows appears, I have thougt "this is the real way to do things". I do not understand why in XXI century we need to use cryptic commands to install anything. When I need to install Lazarus from scratch, this is because I have used Puppy Linux; nobody was making a simple installable version of Lazarus for Puppy, only recently you can get a .sfs that works.

It is my ask for Lazarus developers: please, make REAL installers for Linux. And, please, make Lazarus updating simple, within the Lazarus IDE.

I think it might be asking too much for developers to compile and test packages for many more Linux distros than have already been provided. Puppy Linux is a rather cut down distro and perhaps not an ideal one if you want to avoid the command line. Lazarus does install cleanly under Ubuntu with official packages (other than IDE help, which is my gripe). I can't see how using some other installation system, other than the usual one for the Linux distro, would make any sense. The REAL installers are provided in the Linux distros, not by Lazarus, there are GUIs (Synaptic for Ubuntu) for package managers if you don't like using the command line.

[Marc]

It is my ask for Lazarus developers: please, make REAL installers for Linux.

Define real installers.
Define linux.

The installation of Lazarus itself is no rocket science, simply create a dir, copy all lazarus files and dirs into it and ready. But.....

.... Lazarus has some dependencies. One is FPC, which we can maybe solve ourselves.
More important are the dependencies for the development packages needed to interface with X,GTK,Name_Your_Lib. Those dependencies are installed different for every distribution. There is no generic way of doing this. There is no way for the lazarus team to provide those packages/installers, simply because we don't know all of them and don't have experience on them.

I, for instance, only know about fedora. And when installing fedora you will get the question what kind of machine you want, if you want to do development or somthing like that.. Normally this option is unchecked. When checked, all those dependent development packages are installed. Otherwise you have to do that later yourself.
Other distros... no idea

[theo]

Other distros... no idea

With OpenSuSE you can install from a webpage. See "1-Klick-Installation":
http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=openSUSE%3A11.2&p=1&q=lazarus