Computing: Free Pascal Programming

The Lazarus/Free Pascal project.


Free Pascal is a 32, 64 and 16 bit professional Pascal compiler. It can target many processor architectures: Intel x86 (including 8086), AMD64/x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, SPARC, ARM, AArch64, MIPS and the JVM. Supported operating systems include Linux, FreeBSD, Haiku, Mac OS X/iOS/iPhoneSimulator/Darwin, DOS (16 and 32 bit), Win32, Win64, WinCE, OS/2, MorphOS, Nintendo GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Android, AIX and AROS. Additionally, support for the Motorola 68k architecture is available in the development versions.

Free Pascal features: The language syntax has excellent compatibility with TP 7.0 as well as with most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces). A Mac Pascal mode, largely compatible with Think Pascal and MetroWerks Pascal, is also available. Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading, global properties and several other extra features.

Free Pascal license: The packages and runtime library come under a modified Library GNU Public License to allow the use of static libraries when creating applications. The compiler source itself comes under the GNU General Public License. The sources for both the compiler and runtime library are available; the complete compiler is written in Pascal.

Free Pascal may be freely downloaded from the Free Pascal website. You'll also find there links to detailed documentation in PDF and HTML format.

[Most of this text is copied from https://www.freepascal.org/]

Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal. It includes LCL which is more or less compatible with Delphi's VCL. Free Pascal is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is OOP. Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above platforms it means you don't need to do any recording to produce identical products for different platforms.

Lazarus features:

The Lazarus IDE installer may be downloaded from the Lazarus Project website. Help and documentation (including several detailed tutorials and code samples) may be found in the Lazarus Wiki. Some general considerations and possible issues when compiling or debugging with Lazarus as well as MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS related information may be found in the Lazarus FAQ.

[Most of this text is copied from https://www.lazarus-ide.org/]