[lazarus] Newbie here

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

Hi,

I downloaded the Lazarus project sources cia CVS last night. After some
initial confusion on how to use the files, I managed to compile them. 

The ride wasn't smooth. There were a few missing functions in some modules
that I had to fix by creating dummies. In another place, some TWindow
descendent (TFHelpWindow I think) declared Show and Hide as virtual
functions. They aren't virtual in TWindow itself.

I made the changes to TWindow but couldn't figure out how to compile the
file (the P module under CVS).

Another issue was with TNotebook. One file -- I'm just back from a meeting
that got somewhere, and don't remember what file it was -- was trying to
use a protected function in TNotebook. I needed to comment out those two
lines to get the file to compile. 

The FreePascal text IDE works. I haven't used it extensively but it starts
up fine (although fpviews.pas needed some editing to get there). The
Lazarus IDE doesn't show the component notebook like the screenshot at the
site does. I suppose this is related to the TNotebook problem I faced. The
Notebook example under the examples directory works though except for Gtk
warning messages at the terminal whenever I do something.

Opening an edit view starts displaying messages in the terminal window
about calling the draw procedure (I think it's draw). The messages don't
stop until I close the window -- which remains white throughout. 

I suppose these problems are common to anyone jumping into a project via
CVS. My copies of the file compile now, but I'm not sure if they will
after the next update. I'm afraid to commit my changes in case they
interfere in someone's work-in-progress.

The compiler/ tree doesn't compile either. It reports a missing CPUINFO
unit. A closer look reveals that a cpuinfo.pas file exists in the alpha
and powerpc directories, but not under i386. Copying over the file from
powerpc/ fixes that problem, but breaks a little later with an invalid
typecast. I haven't got past this yet.


Sorry about the uncertainities. It's been a few hours since I last played
with the sources, and I don't remember the exact error messages or problem
files. I will be regularly checking out CVS to see if I can get any
better. I hope to start contributing code in a week's time.


Kiran Jonnalagadda
jace at chip-india.com

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