[lazarus] The use of FPC and Lazarus for simulation software

[Michael.VanCanneyt at Wisa.be]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, P. van der Velde wrote:

> Now I had some questions with regards to the possibilities of FPC and
> Lazarus. If these are way off topic please let me know and I'll take my
> questions elsewhere.
> First I would like to know if it is possible to do dynamic package
> loading in Lazarus and FPC. I know static package loading is possible
> (loading a package at compile time). However I really want to do dynamic
> loading for my project. As far as I know this is not (yet) possible in
> FPC or am I wrong here? If it is not available any idea on how long it
> will take before it will be available or if it will be available at all?

It depends. There is limited support for writing dynamical libraries,
on Linux. Libraries on Win32 work just fine. Loading external libraries
works OK on both platforms.

But there is nothing yet in the line of the package system as it exists in
Delphi. This is not likely to appear in the nearest year.

>
> Another question is with regards to Synchronisation objects. I will be
> using multi-threading quite heavily and as a concequence I will need
> some Sync Objects. I notices that there are a few of them in the FP
> library but I'm kinda missing the MREWS
> (MultipleReadExclusiveWriteSynchroniser). Chances are that I will need
> it because the user interface and some other objects only need to read
> the data while there will probably only be one data generator. Therefore
> it should be more efficient to use a MREWS but as far as I know that is
> not present in the FP lib, or is it?

1.1 has support for multithreading. You can easily implement the needed
classes yourself.

>
> The third question is with regards to the current functionallity of
> Lazarus. How well does Lazarus actually work on Windows machines at this
> moment. I have tried to find a download but can't find one. I also tried
> to download the latest snapshot but I can't seem to get the CVS working
> on my machine (probably due to the fact that I'm doing something really
> stupid because I followed the instructions on the Lazarus website but it
> is still not working). So if anybody has a simple download link for me I
> would be really thankfull. Is it already possible to just download an
> installable version or do I have to compile Lazarus after downloading?

Here, mileage may vary. The IDE runs but is unstable, but most generated applications
will work probably fine with the GTK interface, to a lesser degree the Win32
interface. It may take some time to get the win32 interface to the same
level of stability. The practical upshot of this is that you can develop on
Linux, and recompile on Windows, and the generated application should work.
(some bugs aside, only actual use will tell).

Work on Win32 has been progressing quite well the last months, so chances
are that it won't take long for it to be 100% OK.

>
> Finally I would like to know if the the DUnit testing system
> (http://www.dunit.sourceforge.net) works with FPC and Lazarus? I have
> been using this system to test my classes for some time now I have found
> that it is one of the best testing systems. It has helped me remove
> loads of bugs from my source code.

If it works, only with 1.1, because it makes heavy use of interfaces.

Michael.