[Lazarus] Hi, and a few notes :)

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

Hello Sérgio,

2010/8/16 Sérgio Lopes <knitter.is at gmail.com>:
> or everything would work alright until I created a project with a different widget set from the previous project.

Not all widgetset come pre-compiled. If you are using a widgetset
different from the standard one for the platform, then you need to
build it yourself using the Configure Build Lazarus dialog. You also
need to install whatever libraries they depend on, as well as setting
any necessary linker options.

> I would also like to try and contribute a bit to the project, mainly in the Cocoa widget set, is there any wiki page that describes the development process, needed tools, usual pitfalls? I couldn't find anything related to how to develop Lazarus, though I seem to remind of an page that talked about it, but I can't find it. Any tips are appreciated.

When I started the Cocoa widgetset it was planned to use PasCocoa,
which are bindings which connect Cocoa to Object Pascal without the
need of any special compiler support for that.

After that Jonas mananged to implement compiler support for Objective
Pascal, an integration between Objective-C and Pascal. Of course this
works much better then PasCocoa because it has internal compiler
support for that, but this feature is only in FPC 2.5.1+

So the existing Cocoa widgetset code needs to be updated to use
Objective Pascal and then expanded using it. I was planning on working
on that, but this has a low priority for me, and my ToDo list is very
big, so I don't think I would start anything in the next year or so,
so it would be great if someone else implements this =) Of course I
can always help if you have trouble.

> I'm a bit confused on how to setup Lazarus to use Cocoa, the Cocoa wiki page refers to PasCocoa as a needed dependency, but neither the installation page nor the tips page for OS X  mention that. Is PasCocoa needed to use the Cocoa widget set?

The Cocoa widgetset code is *very* initial, I think that there is no
point in trying to set that up. Do the following steps instead:

1 - Manage to get a working FPC Trunk (2.5.1+) compiler. Maybe I'll
ask Vincent for Mac snapshots for that ... At least I always have huge
trouble building FPC

2 - Get the latest lazarus svn code

3 - Get a working Lazarus Carbon IDE by typing "make bigide"

4 - Learn how to use Objective Pascal

5 - Update the Cocoa widgetset existing code to use Objective Pascal
and start testing it and improving it from there.

There is a Wiki page which explains how to implement controls in a new
widgetset: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/LCL_Internals

I don't know how to use Objective Pascal, there is a Mac Pascal
mailling list where people talk about this:
http://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/mac-pascal

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho