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

[P. van der Velde]

Michael.VanCanneyt at Wisa.be wrote:

>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.
>
Ok that is to bad. Any idea on when it will be available?

To give you an idea why I think I need dynamic package loading I will 
quickly explain the idea. The base idea of my research is that I will 
develop an application which contains basic knowledge about the 
components it controls (compiled with the application are a number of 
abstract base classes which form the base for the components). To allow 
a developer to use the application without having to recompile if he 
develops a new component I thought that it would be best if these new 
components (a collection of classes) would be stored in a package. The 
application can then dynamically load the package, locate the different 
classes and use them. All without recompiling etc.
Now can I also do this with normal external libraries  (i.e. store 
classes in them and extract these for use)? And how could I achieve this.

Regards Petrik