[Lazarus] Lazarus and FreePascal version relations on Linux and Windows?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 22 Feb 2023, Bo Berglund via lazarus wrote:

> I have used Lazarus on Windows and Linux many years and I have built the Linux
> versions from sources but used the official installer for Windows.
>
> On Linux I have had parallel versions of Lazarus but usually the same FPC and
> this has worked fine. I think that on Linux the FPC becomes a global version and
> then new Lazarus gets confused...
>
> On Windows the installer separates the complete package into a separate
> directory which contains both Lazarus and FPC and none is put on system path.
> So when I have say 6 different versions of Lazarus on Windows they are all
> separate and do not conflict with each other.
>
> Now I am having problems installing Lazarus 2.2.4 on Linux systems where older
> Lazarus version exist because they use an older FPC which the new Lazarus cannot
> use (3.0.4 vs 3.2.2).
>
> On Linux FPC is put on path and so the instant one installs 3.2.2 on a system
> already using 3.0.4 disaster follows...

On my home PC, I have 16 FPC versions installed, and 4 or 5 different lazarus systems.
(in fact, a single lazarus installation, just with different --pcp options)

Yet I experience none of the problems that you experience.

The only thing that is different from a default setup is that I make symlinks
/usr/local/bin/ppcx64-3.2.2 -> /usr/local/lib/fpc/3.2.2/ppcx64
(similar for the other tools)

A lazarus install always refers to a versioned ppc/fpc tool.

What we could possibly do is to install fpc with the version numbers
suffixed, and an extra symlink to the current version without suffix.
This way, when you install a newer version, the old version is still
available.

Michael.