[lazarus] FreeCLX and Kylix news!

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Jon Cochran wrote:

> On Tuesday March 20 2001 03:42 pm, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Jon Cochran wrote:
> > > On Tuesday March 20 2001 03:18 pm, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> > > > Another thing is that the CLX still contains some pretty basic
> > > > functionality failures, which I hope Borland will fix soon.
> > >
> > > Out of curiosity, what is CLX missing?
> >
> > Simply put: All needed libraries to make it useful.
> >
> > - No C wrapper library sources for Qt.
> >   So forget about VisualCLX unless you own Kylix.
> 	Not gonna argue this one...
> >
> > - No DBExpress, no Midas libraries. The useful database units that
> >   are provided _NEED_ these libraries.

 	You still will have clientdata set and whatnot...

Of course, but they don't work without Midas. The clientdataset is just
a TDataset wrapper around the Midas lib. Without midas library, no
TClientdataset, no MyBase, nothing.

What you HAVE is TDataset, and this is an abstract class, so it needs descendents.

The two usable descendents that come with Kylix, notably: TSQLDataset (and some
variations) and TClientDataset needs libraries that are not available.

-> you end up without any DB support at all.

>   really, other than DB drivers, which you *should* pay for, what else do you need?

Well, the libraries to make it work. The driver is no good without the
dbexpress library. Which you don't get...

And I hope you'll agree that paying for a Mysql driver when Mysql itself is
free would be strange :)

>
> > - All NetCLX components are missing altogether.
> >   So no apache or server development, unless you use Indy.
> >
> 	Indy is free.

Yes, but Apache module development is out, as well as CGI development.
You can't do those with Indy. (not without re-implementing NetCLX, that is)

>
> > Not to mention that:
> >
> > - The system unit is only useful for Kylix, because you need special
> > compiler magic to make it work. Which compiler has this ? Kylix only.
>
> 	Does this matter?  Wont' lazarus provide it's own equiv?

Yes. All I wanted to say with that is that making the system unit publicly
available is pretty useless, since it'll only work with Kylix anyway.

That said: I've worked with Kylix for some months, and I've seen it improve
a lot. Don't think I am against it, far from it, I even wrote an article
about it which earned the publisher some congratulations from Borland itself,
so...

...but I am a bit sceptical about the 'open source'-ness of Kylix.

(and about some other things about Kylix as well, but that is another story)

Michael.