[Lazarus] Free Pascal 2.4.2 released!

[Bo Berglund]

On Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:45:24 +0100, Sven Barth
<pascaldragon at googlemail.com> wrote:

>On 14.11.2010 00:06, Bo Berglund wrote:
>> On Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:45:39 +0100, Bo Berglund
>> <bo.berglund at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>>> You can install into that folder without problems. As said the two IDEs
>>>> won't conflict with each other (except the file associations, but most
>>>> applications have a similar problem ^^).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the clarification!
>>> I will go ahead and install fpc, then change the compiler location in
>>> Lazarus and recompile it and go from there. :-)
>>>
>> OOPS!
>> Forgot to ask:
>> If I do this in the directory C:\Programs\lazarus:
>> C:\Programs\lazarus\fpc\2.4.2\bin\i386-win32\make.exe clean all
>> will this recompile lazarus with the new fpc?
>> Or do I need to make some changes elsewhere first?
>> How is the new compiler specified for the rebuild?
>
>When you do this in C:\Programs\lazarus the make utility will look for 
>fpc in %PATH%. Execute "fpc -i" in a console window and at the top of 
>the output you'll see the version number of the compiler. If you want to 
>use a different one you need to specify it to the make utility by 
>setting the "FPC" variable.
>
>E.g.
>
>C:\Programs\lazarus\> 
>C:\Programs\lazarus\fpc\2.4.2\bin\i386-win32\make.exe clean all 
>FPC=Some\Other\Dir\With\fpc.exe

OK, that is the info I needed to know, but meanwhile I have been told
that there also exists a lazarus "configuration" in %APPDATA% and that
this contains a specifier on which compiler to use.
If this is the case then this location is not lazarus install specific
and not fpc install specific either so it makes life much harder to
have different versions available at the same time...
I guess that Microsoft decided tha we can have only one single version
of a program installed on Windows at a single time. :-(

And now my problem is to find out if this configuration setting is
used by the command line rebuild of lazarus or only if the rebuild is
started from within lazarus...
Anyone knows the answer to this?

>If you have used the installer for 2.4.2 the path 
>"C:\Programs\lazarus\fpc\2.4.2\bin\i386-win32" should already be in 
>%PATH% (and thus you could also just use "make" without the path...).

I inspected the path by reading it on the command line, but there was
no trace of fpc (not 2.4.2 and not 2.2.4 from the lazarus installation
either).
This lack of path info previously forced me to use the full path to
make.exe because otherwise the make that would be picked up was the
one from my BDS2006 installation, which is on path.
I got this advice when I wanted to rebuild a broken lazarus.

Now I looked in ControlPanel/System/Advanced/Environment and I can see
the added path, but it was done to the SYSTEM path, not the USER path.
The difference between thies is very profound, anything added to USER
path will be available to any application that is started after the
setting has been done, but in order to get the SYSTEM path changes
activated you need to restart Windows....
That is why I don't have fpc 2.4.2 on my path yet.

I think the fpc installer should tell the user that in order to get
the path set he must restart Windows.

>You can also recompile the IDE from within the IDE if you want to.
>
>Regards,
>Sven


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden