[Lazarus] Using Lazarus on Embedded Linux?

[Michael Schnell]

  On 09/25/2010 09:07 AM, Bo Berglund wrote:
>   1) Can I work in Windows or Ubuntu on the same project?
Yes. You can do the same source code for both targets, but you need to 
be aware of certain differences regarding some system calls and things 
like thread synchronizing. You can even cross compile (and supposedly 
cross-remote debug).
> 2) Can I compile in either environment for a third runtime platform?
> I am especially looking for a GUI programming environment where the target system
> is Embedded Linux on ARM or Atom platform boards.
You can cross compile for ARM and, AFAIK, you can compile FPC and 
Lazarus to run on ARM/Linux.

But what ARM system is the target ? I suppose it's hard to make a 
Lazarus program that needs the LCL run on a non-MMU ARM. If you don't 
install X and KDE or GNOME on your embedded system you need to use a LCL 
"Widget type" that has no GUI binding and same are as well restricted as 
not in the same level of perfection as the GUI based Widget Types.

> 3) I need to access the serial communications channel from my programs, so what is
> the support available for RS232 communications in Lazarus/FPC?
You just open the COM device :). In fact it makes a lot of sense to do 
this in a thread (such as Async Pro does). But Async Pro is not yet 
ported to Lazarus and handling threads is not really portable, 
especially with non-GUI widget sets that (at the moment) don't have 
built-in portable Message handling for thread synchronizing.
> The target is an embedded board that is intended to communicate with a data acquisition
> system via RS232 (38400 baud, binary proprietary protocol).
I'm doing a similar research since long :) In fact the market for 
"embedded ARM/Linux boards" is moving to MMU-based ARMs and lots of 
memory, so that installing X is not a problem any more ant thus you can 
use the KDE or Gnome widget set and with that doing software with 
Lazarus is _very_ viable.
> 4) The programs planned will also need to produce graphic rendering of the data
> retrieved from the acquisition system, so what is the graphic capabilities of
> Lazarus/FPC on the Linux platform?
If the ARM has X, same as in Windows. The user program sees the LCL API, 
which is very similar to the Delphi VCL API <just beware of Unicode!> ). 
Regarding Graphics this of course is not a very high level. But (like 
with Delphi you can use things like SDL and other graphics libraries 
that have portable backands).  What specifics do you need ?
> 5) Can data be stored on memory cards/hard disk on an embedded system?
>
With Linux you should store data in files ! There are several flash file 
systems you can install.

-Michael