Charlie took some time to review the FreePascal 3.2.0 packages, I created. I changed them according to the suggestions. Some of the hints are not possible at the moment, needs some changes in the code, others are easy to change. He also found a bug in vlink, which got solved and we include now also the latest version of vlink.
The biggest change for the users is, that it now installs into a folder called “FPC” (instead of FreePascal) also the assign created is named “FPC:” (instead of “FreePascal”). If you did install the old package and install the new one you can afterwards (after the reboot) delete the old “FreePascal” drawer.
Yesterday I did exchange all links to the new version already, when updating the arm-AROS version. But here are the links again
Downloads: – Amiga 68k OS3.x+ 68020+ SoftFPU – Amiga OS4 OS4.x PowerPC (X5000 not supported) – AROS ARM RasPi 1-4 ABIv0 – AROS i386 ABIv0 – MorphOS OS 3.x Have fun using them!
With it the archives are now also uploaded to the official FPC server and can be downloaded there as well, that means we finally have an official Amiga, MorphOS, AROS release of FPC. Congratulations and thanks to all people involved.
I published an installer for ARM AROS but I did not notice that there is no installer for arm-aros, but the InstallerLG is opensource and available on github. I tried to compile and it it works:
Finally Version 3.2.0 of FreePascal is released. This is the first final release contains the Amiga style systems fully usable. A while before I did some extra work to also create an Amiga-sytle installer, which will be also released with this. Today I will also release the 3.2.0 FreePascal packages for Amiga 68k, Amiga OS4, AROS for ARM, AROS for i386 and MorphOS. So basically all versions except AROS for x86_64 because that’s still too unstable to use (mainly the AROS 64 bit is still a moving target and I was not able to fix that, because AROS is simply not working after the last changes and my last questions about it got just ignored)
Downloads: – Amiga 68k OS3.x+ 68020+ SoftFPU – Amiga OS4 OS4.x PowerPC (X5000 not supported) – AROS ARM RasPi 1-4 ABIv0 – AROS i386 ABIv0 – MorphOS OS 3.x Have fun using them!
You notice, these files are still hosted on my server and not on the official FreePascal Server, as the last release 3.0 as well. I was told because my previous packages did not meet the standards for official FreePascal packages. Which was true, I did not care about and packed a lot additional stuff into, like fpgui or LCL and I did not know there are readme texts to add which are not in the official repository but in an external one.
For that release 3.2 I did a lot of work on finding out what would be a good Amiga style package and which docs/texts should be added. Therefore I created that installer package I release today. I also asked for a review and put on to the official FreePascal server, as an official Amiga FreePascal package or give me feedback on what I should further changed.
Sadly that did not happen, I did not get any feedback and the release archives are still nowhere to be found on the official servers, therefore missed for that release.
That whole story took away my motivation as well over the last month as well, it seems rather futile to continue to work on it, when nobody even really use it, which is still true, unfortunately, I have to admit.
I uploaded some of my sources to my github account. With it also Leu and MUIMapparium. MUIMapparium is 100% written by me, therefore it is now under CC0 License. Leu contains fpspread and some files from LCL therefore it is modified LGPL as the original. Have fun with the code. 😉
I had some interesting and intense discussions the last days. Mainly about my programs and vampire. As you might know I did not want to have my programs on the highly illegal distribution Coffin. You cannot detect Coffin, but it’s a distribution especially made for Vampire, therefore if I block Vampire they will not include my software anymore. Besides the Vampire users could push the Vampire team to condemn this distribution and stop to promote it. All of that did not happen, they still added my stuff, even with the Vampire block and the people became mad about me, not about the Vampire team (or the coffin team). I’m not good at being the bad guy.
Basically the people tell me that I’m an idiot and an asshole because I blocked Vampire, so I give up. The people always told me that Coffin is not illegal because it contains abandon-ware only. Ok, if that’s the case I transform my programs to exactly that and put them all to github, then it is legal and everything is solved.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not have a grudge with the Vampire team. I always hear that, that I’m mad about them because of the FPU issue, which is not true, maybe disappointed, but not more, I use my Vampire mainly as RTG-GFX card for A600, the only one currently available and the FPU I can turn off and use femu (which still works and is rather good).
The last long weekend is over and MCAmiga got a new milestone, the search is working for now. Time to make a release, I just tried it again on my Amiga1200/030/50/AGA and it still works nicely, redraw still slow, but it’s quite usable. I’m used to it, always used 64 colors screen with higher resolution. I guess this will be much better when there is a nice GFX card for Amiga1200, like the Warp1200. I really look forward to it, hope will be available to by soon.
MCAmiga 0.7 on Amiga 1200 and OS 3.1.4, with the new search dialog.
Working on the Search function of MCAmiga, again try to get close to the function midnight commander is offering.
I put the search function into a thread that you easily can continue to work, even the search is still running, (as midnight commander also do it). Atm you can press F3 to view the file or F4 to edit or enter to jump to the file directly. It works already nicely but still needs a little bit work, especially the mouse control needs some care.
Because I got this question already some times, and I do not want to write it again and again, I just make this blog post that I can simple point to at any time 😉
Why my Programs does not work on AmigaOS4 X5000?
The problem is, that FreePascal itself does not know the X5000 CPU, and it seems to be not a normal PowerPC, but needs some special care. I heard something about special alignment problems. I don’t have a X5000, Charlie doesn’t have a X5000 and we do not know whats special about it to fix that issue. Besides, we both are not really using OS4, we both use Classic and MorphOS and I use additionally a big Part AROS (mainly i386 a bit ARM).
As some might notice, long time there was no working AmigaOS4 FreePascal, because I did not have any OS4 capable computer. I used mainly AROS, Charlie used mainly MorphOS and both we used some kind of Amiga68k and that was exactly the work shares we did in FreePascal. Charlie asked and explained some times that there could be an AmigaOS4 port (an older Version was still inside) if someone would step up as Maintainer for it. We didn’t want to do, we had AROS and Amiga68k and MorphOS already. Which is already much to work on. Besides OS4 is a completely different kind of fish (because of the Interfaces).
Then one day this thread came along and if you follow the thread you can see, Charlie decided to make the initial OS4 implementation and someone said, he will step up as maintainer, but sadly this didn’t happen. I’m too much of a FreePascal Amiga guy to let that port in such sorry state and started to implement the rest nevertheless, making me the maintainer for OS4, even I had no interest to be. Of course I’m a big fan, that all four platforms are now supported by FreePascal and due our continuing work on it, they are 99% compatible. (e.g we hid the OS4 Interfaces away, so you do not need to care about that when writing your software)
Recently I bought a AmigaOS4 computer (thanks again to the one sold me that, its working nicely), because in UAE it’s not really usable. But I only use it to test FreePascal, my programs the installer and so on. But for that a some thousands Euro machine would be overkill (and also waste of space). I try to keep the FreePascal AmigaOS4 at least somehow working but not more. In the end the message stays:
If you are interested in Pascal and Amiga(OS4) and want to help with the compiler doing a better job on X5000 (or any other computer as well) you can just do it, it’s open source, send us a patch. If you want to step up as maintainer for AmigaOS4, even better, contact ChainQ/Charlie or me, of course we will happily help. Do not fear, you will not be left alone.
Due to multiple questions, yes it is possible to compile MCAmiga for 68000 as well, even it would still need AmigaOS3.x to work. But because I got some requests also to supply such a binary a made a separate archive for a Version for 68000, it’s not really tests, at least it starts:
MCAmiga 0.5 on a 68000 processor and OS3.1
But no promises about the function. It is rather slow but somehow usable.
