[Lazarus] IDE

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On 01/22/13 08:09, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> 
>> From a support POV, I'm bothered that there's something
>> unpleasant lurking: number or speed of CPUs, type of graphics card, 
>> amount or type of memory (testable on x86 using a MemTest CD).
> 
> The hardware I'm running on now is very new - 4 months old. It was a
> whole new system. Intel i7-3770k at 3.5Ghz with 16GB high end non-ECC
> RAM. 3x2TB HDD's in RAIDZ1 (ZFS filesystem) for data storage, 128GB SSD
> boot disk, 850W PSU etc.

[Nod]

> I did thorough tests of my hardware, and there doesn't seem to be any
> problems. Also, all other software run fine - just not Lazarus. Also the
> Windows copy that does run fine, runs in a VM session. So if it was
> faulty memory or some other hardware failure (very unlikely), that VM
> should be affected too. My current OS (FreeBSD 9.1) is rock solid though
> - no other software issues.

Only things I'd note here are that different OSes can fail in different 
ways: a classic was that OS/2 used to bomb on systems that ran Windows 
fine because (it was believed) it stressed the cache. Also I've seen a 
system where MemTest ran fine but it locked up doing real work, I 
suspected a PCI bridge problem.

> I suspect the issue might be related to LCL-GTK2, because often the same
> checkout of Lazarus runs way better under Windows than under Linux. I
> always try and keep FPC and Lazarus versions in sync, across all my
> development VM's. I never compile Lazarus with LCL-Qt, but maybe it is
> time I try. The one major downside of switching to LCL-QT would mean I
> can't have horizontal file tabs to the right of my editor. But if LCL-QT
> solves the problems I experience, then the right positioned tab issue is
> something I can live with.

I think the things to try are (a) a remote X session if you can manage 
it conveniently and (b) a non-root ** VNC session whether it's 
convenient or not :-)  There are definitely issues about desktops and 
apps looking weird over remote or VNC connections, but at the very least 
this should isolate you from potential problems caused by your local X 
subsystem.

** By non-root, I mean VNC running as a completely separate X server. I 
don't mean it scraping an existing session which is the sort of thing 
you'd be doing in a remote support role. If necessary I can talk you 
through this.

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

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