[Lazarus] Release 1.0, part 2

Tom Lisjac zikon770 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 30 06:15:18 CET 2009


Hi Florian,

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Florian Klaempfl
<florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> Tom Lisjac schrieb:
>> To compare, Linux is now running corporate
>> datacenters around the world... and Lazarus is still in beta with very
>> few public applications deployed.
>
> The same might be applied to delphi too: it appears that there are few
> public applications deployed.

Given it's relatively brief life, there are actually quite a few well
known applications, including Skype, TOAD, Altium Designer, The
Bat!,...etc that were built with Delphi:

http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Good_Quality_Applications_Built_With_Delphi

Sourceforge currently hosts 3,170 Delphi/Kylix related projects while
Torry's and DSP also list thousands of Delphi related applications and
packages.

In contrast, the lazarus-ccr has 56 packages at last count and
Sourceforge shows 124 Lazarus and 432 Pascal projects. These small
numbers provide an alarming perspective on the total Lazarus/FPC
mindshare as Sourceforge also hosts 20,313 projects for Java, 14,645
for php, 13,987 for C#/C++,  5,208 for Python and even 2,030 just for
the Eclipse ide.

>> source level past the version 1.0 release
>> that will hopefully be shared by the FPC team.
>
> When did FPC break source level stuff not being a bug fix?

During this time last year, I was working on a large project that I
intended to deploy to several thousand users within my company. The
compiler/ide was working great, but I was also tracking the compiler
svn to make sure I didn't get into "creeping features" trouble that
might break the project and cause maintenance issues downstream. Sure
enough, sometime during the Nov/Dec 2008 timeframe I got a compile
error with the new version. I don't remember the details but found a
small posting explaining that this was due to a permanent change in
the scoping of inherited class variables "in this and future compiler
versions". I will have to un-archive the project to provide the
specifics, but I remember having to move some variables out of either
private or protected and exposing them more globally to get my
application to compile.

Regardless of the specifics, this was a change to the language within
2.x that broke my code at the source level. Changing the scope of a
variable in post production would have also triggered a QA review and
unwanted visibility for using "beta software"... so I decided to put
the idea on hold and wait another year to see if Lazarus and FPC would
come together at 1.0 and become a unified, non-experimental tool that
I could rely on for production coding. That year has passed and here
we are.

With all that I've said over the last few days, I sincerely hope that
you and the other developers have not interpreted any of my comments
as criticism. The accomplishments of the compiler and IDE teams have
been both inspiring and spectacular! But at this point, I think it's
time to revisit some prevailing attitudes and make a few adjustments.
In short, after over a decade of brilliant, creative work, it's time
to stop pushing back on the idea of a 1.0 for Lazarus/FPC and to rally
behind the goals of production stability for application builders and
promoting a wider utilization for this outstanding tool while the
window of opportunity for it still exists.

Thanks,

-Tom




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