[Lazarus] Help on FCL?

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:22:03 +0100
Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1 at aol.com> wrote:

> Mattias Gaertner schrieb:
> 
> >> Would it help to add a dummy package (or project?) with all (relevant) 
> >> FCL units?
> > 
> > You mean in the fpc sources?
> > Yes, such dummy packages would help the IDE to find out which unit
> > belongs to the FCL, which one to RTL, etc.
> > It could also setup the unit and include paths. Although I'm not sure
> > if the include file names are unique enough to use only one lpk for
> > the whole FCL.
> 
> The fpdoc projects include the commandline arguments needed to parse the 
> units.

Can you give an example file?

 
> > Of course it can not be used for compiling, because for that you need
> > one lpk per output directory.
> 
> This must be handled inside the help system. When (application) projects 
> are created, e.g. RTL.lpi and FCL.lpi, there shouldn't exist a need to 
> compile and load according packages into the IDE.

At the moment the IDE can load only one lpi. A lpk can be loaded
additionally.

 
> > The alternative would be to store such dummy packages in the Lazarus
> > sources, but then it needs conditionals for every FPC version.
> 
> Version problems may arise, but I don't think that RTL/FCL units are 
> moved around in future versions, so that the projects will stay valid 
> across FPC versions.

They were moved in the past. They will probably move again.

 
>[...]
> > The IDE passes the information of the unit file name, the fpdoc
> > element path and the Lazarus package name of the unit to the chm
> > help database. I don't know what the chm db does with that.
> 
> Hmm, I'd assume that the supplied package name selects the chm file to 
> load. This requires that the name matches the *fpdoc* package name, 
> regardless of Lazarus package names.

AFAIK the chm viewer loads all chm files. And yes, when the package
name is 'rtl' it shows something from the rtl.chm. I don't know how the
chm viewer handles the combined rtl+fcl+lcl.chm file.

 
> > The fpdoc editor has the same information, additionally searches all
> > ancestors and uses all this to search in the fpdoc paths of the
> > package(s) and the IDE.
> 
> FPDoc Editor searches for the XML docs, which must reside in the fpdoc 
> path of the package or project. Most proably it's also assumed that the 
> xml file name matches the unit name. That's the only information that 
> the FE can use to create new xml files.

Yes. 
Well, it uses a bit more.


Mattias