[Lazarus] Dear developers, we need your help before releasing 0.9.26

[Tom Verhoeff]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 11:06:39AM +0800, Paul Ishenin wrote:
> 
> Lazarus 0.9.26 is coming. We have made all the main changes we wanted to
> make. We spent the last couple of days on bug fixing. We have fixed many
> issues, but we are not sure we have fixed all regressions. It would be 
> sad to release a version, that you cannot use.

We use Lazarus 0.9.24 (mostly under Windows Vista) in our first-year
programming education.  It replaces Delphi 7, which we used in previous
years, but which is no longer available to us.

There have been a number of problems, which are quite upsetting for
beginning users.

Some of the issues have been hard to pinpoint exactly.

I have made a FAQ for our students to assist them in getting to grips
with some problems.  See

	<http://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/edu/lazarus/>

It would be most helpful if the next Lazarus release behaves "more
predictably".  I have not yet tested 0.9.25 (for lack of time; I will
see if I can find someone to do this for me).

However, here are some of these issues:

 1.  When the Environment > Environment options ... > Window >
     "Hide IDE windows on run" is checked, it would still be convenient
     (and expected) to get those windows back when single stepping through
     a program.

 2.  When running a program that produces a run-time error, a dialog
     window comes up stating that it cannot find system.inc (or such) and
     asks if you wish to look for it.  (This happens in a default installation
     of the 0.9.24 release; apparently some path is not properly set;
     the FPC sources have been installed and are available.)

 3.  All too often Run fails (could be a Vista problem), and if one
     does not reset the debugger, the program will hang altogether.

     Resetting the debugger after each run (even if the program
     was confirmed by the IDE to be stopped) is needed (and enough) to
     guarantee "proper" operation.  But this is quite cumbersome.

     It is not clear to me what is happening here.  At this moment we
     work with console applications (no GUI).  When a program is run,
     it can happen that the command window opens, but no output appears,
     and the program seems stuck.

 4.  Similar to 2. above, the first Step Over will ask you to locate
     system.inc.  Step Over should not dive into system to stop there.

     Actually, I would not expect the first Step Into to dive in the
     system routines and attempt to stop there, either.

     Step Out would also be useful.

 5.  While stepping through a program, pointing at a variable in
     the Source Editor will not work reliably to show the variable's value.
     For some occurences of the variable it works, for others not.
     And for another variable it works for all occurrences (as expected).
     Using the Watch List is a workaround, but not convenient.

 6.  A few of the (around 80) Lazarus installations fail to work
     reliably.  Even reinstallation did not help.  Could this be
     a Vista-related problem?

 7.  Not easily solvable in the short term: the help system is
     too incomplete and erratic in coverage and requires web access
     in the default configuration.
     N.B. Our students will not have web access when doing an exam for
     this course!

There are further issues, but these were attracting most attention.

Feedback would be appreciated.

Best regards,

	Tom
-- 
E-MAIL: T.Verhoeff @ TUE.NL     | Dept. of Math. & Comp. Science
PHONE:  +31 40 247 41 25        | Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
FAX:    +31 40 247 54 04        | PO Box 513, NL-5600 MB Eindhoven
http://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/  | The Netherlands