[Lazarus] RE : Lazarus crashing reproducibly on startup (64-bitLinux)

brian brian at meadows.pair.com
Sat Mar 24 09:19:36 CET 2012


On 03/20/2012 04:59 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> brian wrote:
>
>>> I fairly regularly build both FPC trunk and the current release on
>>> multiple platforms (but markedly /not/ on x86-64) and in many cases
>>> drop libgdb from FPC since it's only required for the fp IDE. Looking
>>> at your list of undefineds, I think the right question would have been
>>> "how can I build a vanilla libgdb that doesn't require a whole lot of
>>> Python libraries etc."- and I'm afraid that's one for the gdb
>>> developers rather than us.
>>>
>>
>> So you're telling me that *any* program which I need to build myself
>> and which pulls in libgdb is going to have all those undefineds?
>> That does sound to be a bit of a shortcoming if so! I did try
>> installing a bunch of Python libraries as well, but didn't get
>> anywhere.
>
> I'm not going back to the October stuff right now, this could well be
> a distro issue particularly if it's got a libgdb package but not the
> underlying Python libraries. I'm afraid I've never been into Python:
> my style's more Horne :-)
>
>> Anyway, I shall keep bashing away at trying to get the svn versions
>> to build and install, and see whether they cure the latest problem.
>> It will take me a little while to get it done, but I'll report back
>> if I manage to fix it - I'm not too keen on the alternative, which
>> is trying to resurrect my Fortran from umpty-mumble years ago.
>
> I'd suggest getting a working FPC 2.6.0, either as a binary (from the
> FPC servers) or building it yourself although this might require that
> you start with 2.4.4. In the latter case use something like
>
> $ make NOGDB=1 OPT='-gl' all
>
> followed by a make install , after which you'll probably want to make
> sure that you've got /usr/local/bin/ppc386 ->
> /usr/local/lib/fpc/2.6.0/ppc386 or similar (make install doesn't mess
> with that symlink: I'm not sure that's a wise omission but it's the
> way it is).
>
> The NOGDB will make sure that there is no reference to libgdb, but as
> I said earlier it is only required by the fp text-mode IDE.
>
> Having to that point, get a recent Lazarus. Now I'm sure you've got
> your own preferences, but the one that I've built most recently was
> the fixes RC from SVN
>
> svn co
> http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/branches/branches/release_0_9_30_4
> ./lazarus-fixed
>
> If you decide that you really do need libgdb, which you DO NOT if your
> interest is Lazarus, then I suggest finding or building a copy around
> v6.7.1 and then using make GDB_V607=1 OPT='... since this definitely
> works on Debian (Etch/Lenny/Squeeze) x86 and others. HTH.
>

Hi Mark,

I tried rebuilding gdb and libgdb.a from source, making sure I had all 
the Python libraries installed. That seemed to work OK, no errors. I 
installed everything and tried rebuilding FPC with no switches. There 
were less undefined globals, but still a lot of them.

So then I followed your instructions.

1) Yes, FPC from svn will build correctly with the NOGDB switch you 
provided. I did so, and installed it.

2) I downloaded the Lazarus that you indicate above. It built without 
errors, but when I try to run it, it still comes up with the error 
203. Running under the debugger produces this output

<paste>

Runtime error 203 at $00000000006EFFDA
   $00000000006EFFDA
   $00000000006D90ED

[Inferior 1 (process 4558) exited with code 0313]


</paste>

I've taken a look on the Linux Mint forums, and I certainly don't seem 
to be the only one seeing this problem, as David's posting also 
suggested.

I have two friends who are total non-programmers. Neither FPC nor 
Lazarus will have been anywhere near their machines. One of them is 
running Debian Testing, on which Linux Mint Debian (LMDE) is built, 
the other is running LMDE as I am. Both are on 64-bit distros.

I'm going to ask them both to try installing Lazarus and then try to 
run it. If, as I suspect, the LMDE user sees the crash and the plain 
Debian user doesn't, then I think that will be fairly conclusive.

In the short term, I guess the best way out will be to set up a 
virtual machine with a copy of some other distro and do any Lazarus 
work in that.

I'm still a relative novice at Linux, though I've long experience with 
Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero Pascal/Delphi under Windows. If any of 
the developers want me to try compilations etc. under LMDE, I'd be 
happy to devote up to a couple of hours a day in doing so, but I'd 
need to be led through most of it.

Thanks for your help, and I'll report back when I hear from my 
friends, although I will be very surprised if they do anything other 
than confirm what I've found, i.e. Lazarus will run just fine on plain 
Debian but not on LMDE.


Brian.





More information about the Lazarus mailing list