[lazarus] Clean build from nothing

[Marco van de Voort]

The point that FPC is written in itself has already been made, but...

Another shock might be that FPC doesn't use libc, but interfaces with Linux
(the kernel) itself.

> My point (rather badly made I admit) is that there are standard ways of
> installing software, and it appears that fpc (and lazarus by extension) do
> not follow that standard.

There is no standard on Linux. There are only provisions for C programs that
follow some scheme, nothing more. If you step outside it, there is no
support.

FPC supports multiple platforms not just *nix. You could also say th

There are no Pascal headers (or something that they could be produced from
except from manual labour), no generic installers nothing.

Configure is nothing but a large patchy shellscript to query a standard C
compiler. It is nothing to do with the OS.

> So any hopes of getting more people involved are immediatly stunted. 

Most people by far use binary packages on *nix. In general FPC's system is much
more userfriendly than the routine, it is

> The rule of thumb should be, as you are move from doing things in the
> "normal/standard" way it should be documented more and more carefully to
> keep the level of obviousness from disappearing over the horizon. 

Till now, most developpers quickly got the hang of it. Maily also because
the core developpers are on the diverse lists to provide direct one-on-one
tips. 

Still some more documentation to the buildproces would be nice, but it seems
that you've already missed the make cycle faq (which is a sub-page of the
real faq?) It is outdated, but addresses the issues somewhat. I'll see if I
can update it a bit with the info I wrote earlier on the list.

> (and keep in mind my horizons as a non-user are quite different then you
> as someone who has gotten things working).
 
I started that way too :-)