Welcome to the Free Pascal IDE!
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Please take the time to read this file to avoid most
common installation problems, and to get the most out of
this software!
General information Ü
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First of all: note that the IDE is currently still in
beta state! That means that some functions may not work,
or may not work as expected. We do our best to fix all
bugs and make the IDE reliable and stable, however, you
may still encounter some problems using it.
Therefore you should be careful using untested functions,
and make regularly backup copies of your source files!
If you encounter any problems using the IDE, then please
report it to the authors by sending an e-mail to
"bugs@freepascal.org" or by entering it in the bugs
database at "http://www.freepascal.org". (Note, that we
can't fix bugs we don't have any knowledge of, or can't
reproduce, so, it's in your own interest to report bugs
as fast and precisely as possible.)
You should be also careful with hotkeys and shortcuts!
The IDE is designed to be compatible with the BP IDE as
much as possible, however, the platform differences and
some improvements may break that compatibility at some
points, which may result in slightly or totally different
behaviour than expected. Therefore, you should first
experiment with the IDE some time before using for
serious purposes, and read all available docs before
reporting a "bug"!
Version conflicts Ü
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IDE snapshots are created on a regular basis. That means,
that the IDE and it's embedded compiler are always the
most up-to-date versions.
Unless you've installed the IDE from a full distribution,
you'll have to install the latest compiler and RTL
binaries to avoid version conflicts and get the IDE
working. You can do this by downloading the latest binary
snapshots from "http://www.freepascal.org" and copying
it's contents directly over your existing installation.
(You can also install these files in separate directories
and set up the IDE to search for them at that place.
However, this may result in different behaviour and
incompatibilities between of the command-line based and
the embedded compiler.)
When installing a new snapshot you should make sure you
back up your existing installation! This is not a
neccessary step for the IDE to function, however, it may
proove very helpful, when the newly installed snapshot
contains a new bug or is incompatible in some aspects
with your previous one.
Configuration Ü
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Once you have installed the IDE, it requires two
configuration changes before it can compile. This is due
to the fact that the IDE includes its own compiler; it
does not use ppc386.exe and thus it also does not use the
configuration in the file fpc.cfg.
Select Target from the Compile menu and then check the
correct default target (this is Go32V2 for DOS).
Next, choose Directories in the Otions menu and in the
line "Unit directories" enter the path to your copy of
the RTL directory, usually c:\pp\rtl\go32v2. If you have
done everything correct and it still doesn't work, you
may have grabbed a snapshot that has a bug; in this case
try again one or two days later or ask for help on one of
the mailing lists (see later!).
Documentation Ü
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Although the IDE itself has no kind of "native"
documentation or help, it is capable of reading HTML,
Turbo Pascal (TPH), and Norton Guide (NG) format files.
That means, that you can use both the FPC documentation
(included in your distribution, or downloadable from the
Free Pascal HP) and/or the help files of your Turbo or
Borland Pascal (from version 5.5 thru 7.0) installation.
You can install help files of all types in the on-line
help system by going to Help menu, selecting Files and
adding them to the list.
Linux and FreeBSD Ü
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Free Vision, the windowing library on which the IDE is
based, is more advanced than a VT100 terminal can
handle. Unfortunately, Unix terminal emulators provide
mostly VT100 functionality, and do not allow access to
all VGA characters.
On a VT100 compatible terminal, Free Vision replaces VGA
characters as good as possible using the characters that
the VT100 does have. This works very well, but it means
that window borders arrows and other characters do not
look optimal. Free Vision uses a slightly enhanced
version of this VT100 mode on FreeBSD.
When running on the Linux console (no X) Free Vision
switches into Linux console mode and makes use of the
/dev/vcsa* devices to display the full character set. To
make use of this mode, you must use a VGA console font in
codepage 437, 850, 852 etc. encoding. If your distribution
uses /etc/sysconfig/console, these are good values to put
into that file:
CONSOLE_FONT="cp850-8x16"
CONSOLE_SCREENMAP="8859-1_to_uni.trans"
CONSOLE_UNICODEMAP=""
To allow non-root users to use the Linux console mode you
must make sure they have permission to use /dev/vcsa*.
The best way to do this is to make sure the utility
"grab_vcsa" is in a directory pointed to by the
environment variable "PATH" and configured setuid root.
It will change the ownership of the /dev/vcsa device the
user is using to him until he logs out.
The Linux console mode can be combined with fbdev. At
high resolutions, i.e. 1024x768, the IDE becomes very
pleasant to work with.
More information Ü
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If you need more informations you can:
þ read the FAQ and the documentation
þ join one or more of the 4 mailing lists
For the FAQ, for the on-line version of the docs,
and for information on joining the mailing lists go to
the Free Pascal homepage at http://www.freepascal.org.
Well, I think, this should be enough info for the start.
Thanks for taking time reading this file, and please
don't forget to report any bugs or problems you encounter
using the IDE as soon as possible. Also feel free to
write us, if you have any comments, suggestions, ideas,
etc. regarding the compiler and/or the IDE!
Have as much fun using the IDE, as we had creating it! ;)
The Free Pascal IDE Development Team
