Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Version 3.0.4
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* Introduction
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There are other platforms (like other BSD variants) which are more or less
working, but there is currently no maintainer for them and thus we cannot
provide adequate support. If you want to change this and create and
maintain versions for other platforms and targets, feel free to contact us,
e-mail addresses are listed below.
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* Features
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* Minimum requirements
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Processor:
i386, x86_64, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, i8086, Motorola 68k, Sparc or JVM
runtime
Win32:
- MS Windows NT/2000/XP or later (Win95, 98 and ME are not supported
in FPC officially any longer).
- 16 MB RAM
OS/2:
- OS/2 Warp v3.0 with one of late fixpaks - FP 35 should be fine,
OS/2 Warp v4.0 with FP 5 and above, WSeB, MCP or any eComStation version
(OS/2 2.0/2.1 currently not supported, not even for compiled programs).
- ArcaOS should be OK too, but it hasn't been tested.
- Certain features (e.g. Unicode support in the RTL) require proper support
only available in later OS/2 versions (at least OS/2 Warp 4.0 FP14),
otherwise the functionality may be limited (but the binaries still work
even on the older versions, albeit with some limitations).
Linux:
- system running a 2.4.x kernel
FreeBSD:
- There are separate releases for FreeBSD 7.x system or 8.x system. The code
works on 6.x too. Older versions might need specific adaptations.
Mac OS X:
- Mac OS X 10.4 and higher
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* Quick start - Win32
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To test the compiler, change to the demo\texts directory of the FPC tree
and type on the command line:
fpc hello
hello
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* Quick start - DOS
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To test the compiler, change to the demo\texts directory of the FPC tree
and type
fpc hello
hello
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* Quick start - OS/2 / eComStation / ArcaOS
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Don't forget to set PATH and LIBPATH as mentioned by the install program.
This can be done by opening file named CONFIG.SYS located in the root
directory of your boot drive (e.g. C:\) with a plain text editor (e.g.
E.EXE), extending the lines starting with "set PATH=" and "LIBPATH=" (both
are case insensitive) with path to newly installed binaries (installation
root as selected in the installation program appended with "\BIN\OS2" for
PATH and "\DLL" for LIBPATH) and save it again as a plain text file.
Note that changes to LIBPATH require restart of your machine in order to come
into effect.
To test the compiler, change to the demo\texts directory of the FPC tree
and type
fpc hello
hello
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* Quick start - Linux/FreeBSD
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Start the install script with ./install.sh and follow the instructions.
To test the compiler, change to the demo/texts directory of the FPC tree
and type
fpc hello
hello
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* Quick start - Mac OS X/Darwin
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The Xcode command line tools must be installed before FPC is installed. See
the download page for more information (the method changes with almost every
new Xcode and/or Mac OS X release, so the information in this readme is
usually out of date).
This second method additionally includes a text mode IDE, which partly works
using XQuartz xterm.
After installing the package, you can write your source code in your favorite
editor (including Project Builder and XCode). To compile something, go to the
directory containing your source files in Terminal and type:
fpc name_of_your_source_file
The compiler only accepts one file name as argument, but will automatically
search for and compile any units used by the specified source file. Run
"fpc" without any arguments to get an overview of the possible command line
options.
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* Documentation
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The documentation is available as HTML pages, PDF, PS, and text although the
recommended format is pdf. The latest PDF version is available on
ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/fpc/dist/docs-pdf/, other formats are available
for download in the directory of the respective distributed release.
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* Suggestions, Help, Bug reporting, snapshots, ...
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Both these adresses are for mailing lists. If you're not subscribed,
be sure to mention this fact when sending questions to these lists,
so that people sending answers know about it and send you a copy.
Information about available lists and subscription can be found
on http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo
WWW: http://www.freepascal.org
FTP: ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/fpc
(several mirrors exist, see website for links)
You will also normally find in the snapshot archive file a readme, with
a note about the latest included changes. It is quite common, though it
doesn't always happen, that when a bug is reported it is fixed and a fixed
version can be obtained the NEXT day in the appropriate snapshot.... yes
really!
Also on the ftp site you'll find a /dist directory, with the latest
distributed releases, a /docs directory, and a /snapshot/<version>/source
directory, in which every night at about 0100 GMT the latest source
generated by the developers during the day & evening before is exported
from SVN into ZIP file fpc.zip.
REPORTING BUGS
----------------
If you find a bug in the released version, you may want to try a snapshot
(see SNAPSHOTS above) to see if it has been fixed before reporting it to
the fpc-devel mailing list.
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* License
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The compiler and most utilities and executables distributed in this package
fall under the GPL, for more information read the file COPYING.v2.
Some specific utilities and programs come under the license described in
COPYING.v3, COPYING.DJ, COPYING.EMX, COPYING.RSX and licensez.ip.
FPC for JVM comes with some third party tools which are convered by
the following licenses:
- jasmin.jar comes under the license described in jasminli.txt
- bcel-6.0-SNAPSHOT.jar comes under the Apache 2.0 license, described by
apache2.txt
Portions of FPC are based on libffi. See libffi.txt for the license of that
code.
Some of the licenses of the third party tools require to make the source
available. If you cannot find the sources or information where to find
them for a certain tool under such a license included into the FPC
distribution, please contact us through the contact details given
at http://www.freepascal.org/moreinfo.var and we will provide you
the sources or information where to find them.
The DOS version (go32v2) contains some binaries of DJGPP. You can obtain
the full DJGPP package at: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
NOTE: OS/2 version of the installer uses the library UNZIP32.DLL from
Info-ZIP. Info-ZIP's software (Zip, UnZip and related utilities)
is free and can be obtained as source code or executables from
Internet/WWW sites, including http://www.info-zip.org.