[Lazarus] fpGUI for the LCL on x86 Linux, and standalone on SPARC Solaris 10

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-01-15 at 12:20 +0000, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>> OK, it compiles and runs with that hack- at least enough to prove the 
>> concept.
> 
> Thank for giving feedback on your progress - I'm glad I could help a
> bit.

You helped a lot, because fpGUI and the UI designer are probably usable 
for GUI work on Solaris with minor tweaks, and might be usable for 
simple Lazarus projects (using lazbuild, not the IDE).

>> definitely not trying to find fault here, since I think being able to 
>> bring it up on a new OS that easily shows your code in a very favourable 
>> light.
> 
> Unfortunately I don't have access to a SPARC system, so it will be up to
> you if you want to take this further. I wonder if fpGUI will behave the
> same on a x86 Solaris system - as it does on your SPARC Solaris system.
> I'll see if I can download a OpenSolaris CD or something, though I have
> never worked on Solaris either. I went to DistroWatch and read that
> OpenSolaris is discontinue... is that only OpenSolaris, or Solaris (if
> there still is a product like that) as well?

I've got one Solaris 8 and one Solaris 10 development system, I'm 
currently backporting FPC onto 8 (works, but haven't proven it can 
compile itself). I might go looking for (Open)Solaris 11, but at present 
everything appears to be in flux since OpenSolaris has forked/migrated 
to try to achieve independence from Oracle... I don't even know whether 
they currently have anything downloadable.

If you (or any other FPC/Lazarus developer) wanted access I could 
probably set up an SSH reverse proxy to get you through our firewall. 
However I'd much rather not have the Sun machine on any more than 
necessary- it's in my workroom and is loud, hot, and hungry. On the 
other hand it's several orders of magnitude faster than some of the 
other kit I've got here, e.g. the ARM which takes a week to link Lazarus.

My own opinion is that Solaris and possibly SPARC might be worth 
supporting. I think that Oracle will be more positive about SPARC than 
Sun were in their final couple of years- having their own line of CPUs 
that they can use for distinctive turnkey systems is probably good 
business. In that case Oracle will backtrack on their existing 
commitment to Linux and instead push Solaris, to be honest Sun did not 
appear to be fully committed to to Linux and if you wanted to do 
anything clever with their kit you had little option but to run Solaris.

The remaining big question is how many Java users Oracle will alienate 
with their attempts to take full control, and whether Lazarus can take 
advantage of the situation.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]