free pascal / lazarus

[zog]

Hi Feverish,

Don't worry no one is obligied to do anything, it's not like anyone is getting paid to do anything! You must live in a really remote area if it takes three weeks to get your post mail order.
I am spoilt as I can buy just about any electronic dohickey imaginable, I want from a shop called CPC in Preston. Coincidentally I have managed to meet up with Paul Michell of Michell computing as it turns out he lives up the road from me. Paul is lucky enough to get paid to use Lazarus, he has done some awesome things with his Global Information Managment system program. He has got a 12 GB laptop running Kubuntu containing 4 virtual boxed emulated machines, on one of which he was running Lazarus under emulated windows XP. It really showed off the power of Lazarus and free pascal. I am hoping he is going to help me, to create a cross compiler for the Raspberry pi from linux. In the meantime I am going to work on my lazarus / raspi website, I nearlly have enough useful information inside it to publish it.
I also been a bit distracted as I found the source code for the Colossal cave adventure on the web. I have been trying to get the C version to compile on the raspi, but so far it is refusing to do so.

[feverish]

Central America does seem a long way from UK and where I am IS a bit remote. We don't actually get mail deliveries to the home out here. International mail is routed via the USA postal 'service', which itself tends to be a bit sporadic. Mail delays are compounded by having to drive to the town along rock-strewn dirt roads, to see if anything is waiting for us, but that's a fact of life!

For cross-compilation, are you aware of CodeTyphon? <http://www.pilotlogic.com/sitejoom/> It has in-built up-to-date FPC & Lazarus, a rather nice editor and includes many extra component libraries. It purports to simplify Lazarus cross-compilation between and betwixt lots of operating systems and different processors. The downside of it, so far as I am concerned, is the lack of adequate tutorials and documentation, the 'examples' shown evidently being for Lazarus versions of a bye-gone age, the on-line 'help' is virtually not there, and I am too much of a linux beginner to make complete sense of it unaided, as yet, though I do use the Lazarus bit to write and compile stuff on a Windows 7 PC in preparation for cross-compilation to the Raspi.

[Thaddy]

btw I kept my promise Tutorial on its way.

[zog]

Just noticed my .deb install package got deleted from file dropper - I thought it would be there for 30 days
- my mistake got deleted after 7 days.

http://www.filedropper.com/lazrpi -deleted

I will up load it again tonight when i get in as I have to go to work now.
By the way did any one use or upload this file ?

Can anyone host this large file ?

Jack

[zog]

I have created a rudimentary web site for Raspberry Pi + Lazarus . The sites purpose is to offer basic advice and assistance to beginners using the raspberry pi in conjuction with Lazarus. The site is attempting to collect and collate knowlege that is scattered across these forums and present it in a more logical and consistent form. The site embeds useful pages inside itself from this site and other web pages.
As I learn more I will attempt to document what I have learnt and post it up to the site.

Please feel free to contribute!

There is also a link of the site for the new location of the lazrpi.deb installation package in the installation section.

http://superbitysoft.co.uk/lazberrypi/

I hope this info is of some use. Jack

[DirkS]

Nice start. ATM only one point of criticism: in the Laz install section there's black text on a dark-bluish / purplish background which I find very hard to read.
Personally I would choose a slightly lighter background colour. It would make the text stand out more and also make the scrollboxes a bit more prominent.

Gr.
Dirk.

[feverish]

. . . .

I hope this info is of some use. Jack

All beginners need something like this. I only wish it had been available when I started, it would have saved hours of pain. Congratulations.

[Thaddy]

Can anyone host this large file ?
Jack

No problem. send me an email.

[jwdietrich]

I have created a rudimentary web site for Raspberry Pi + Lazarus . The sites purpose is to offer basic advice and assistance to beginners using the raspberry pi in conjuction with Lazarus. The site is attempting to collect and collate knowlege that is scattered across these forums and present it in a more logical and consistent form. The site embeds useful pages inside itself from this site and other web pages.

Thank you for providing this very interesting reference.

BTW, the tutorial on the RPi computer at the Free Pascal wiki ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Laza ... spberry_Pi ) has been considerably expanded, now also describing I/O to external hardware devices like sensors, actuators or motors.

Your site and the tutorial at the Lazarus wiki cover widely different topics, therefore they are complementary.

[zog]

Thanks to you all for the positive feed back. Thaddy I am using my sky drive to host my large file there is a link to it on my website www.superbitysoft.co.uk/lazberrypi on the downloads page. Thanks for the file hosting offer. I am now experimenting with IO, I hope to produce an Lazarus Raspberry pi IO package. The idea being you could drop a control on to a form representing an LCD display or an LED and after assigning some pins you would have an instant working LCD or led with an appropriate external circuit attached.I will document any advances on my web site in due course.

[feverish]

WoW !! Christmas is already here.

[jwdietrich]

I am now experimenting with IO, I hope to produce an Lazarus Raspberry pi IO package. The idea being you could drop a control on to a form representing an LCD display or an LED and after assigning some pins you would have an instant working LCD or led with an appropriate external circuit attached.I will document any advances on my web site in due course.

That is an excellent idea. I would enjoy to read about your progress.

[zog]

I have managed to get gpio working on my pi using Gordon Hendersons wiring pi. I am testing my code using a Gert board. I have created GUI versions of Gerts test program to read the buttons on the Gert board and another program that allows you to strobe a pattern across all the leds. I hope to control the pulse width modulator using GPIO 18 soon. I have noticed that gordons library does not export the function to set pins to one of their alternate functions. I have had a look at Gerts c code for the gert board and it seems fairly easy to read and write to the GPIO pins directly. As always my biggest problem is finding spare time! I will probably start posting to a new thread as this thread is really about Lazarus installation.

[feverish]

Thank you so much for your efforts, they are invaluable. There being no commercial outlets in this country for Raspberry pi or its add-ons, it takes time and is quite expensive to replace failed items, and slows down progress, but the bright side is the possibility that before we are fully up and running again here, pi-wise, we'll be able to incorporate more of what you have been doing into developing our teaching efforts.

Should you open a new topic, it would help if you would announce it in this one.

[pbreneman]

Three minimal FPC and fpGUI distros were recently updated on this page:
http://www.turbocontrol.com/easyfpgui.htm

The arm-linux release works on my RPi and might be the easiest way to see things work.

[rudiratlos]

Hi,
I've just released my unit rpi_hal, which provides functions and procedures to access rpi HW SPI, GPIO and I2C. More Info can be found here:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_on_Raspberry_Pi under point: rpi_hal-Hardware Abstraction Library (GPIO, I2C und SPI functions and procedures)

Forum where you can find the link to the Software:
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index ... 991.0.html under point SW

[plugwash]

Just to let you guys know raspbian jessie now has a version of fpc 2.6.2 with hard float patches.

[zog]

Cool thanks plugwash.

[Thaddy]

Note that FPC trunk has these patches upstream in the official freepascal.org trunk.
It also has a lot more ARM related improvements.
I am running 2.7.1 initially built on the Pi with 2.6.2 and cycled through itself (2.7.1) a second time with OPT="-CpARMV6Z -CaEABIHF -CfVFPV2 -OpARMV6Z -O2".

A second bootstrap/cycle was needed to be able to use these new options. I am looking at creating an fpmakefile using these and generate a makefile.

[Mukatai]

Hello,

I'm new with lazarus and Raspbian, I search a tutorial for update my lazarus to the latest version and fpc 2.6.2, if it's possible ? Where can i find this ?

I tested the article of Michell Computing News but it don't work

Thanks,
Bye.

[zog]

You can do this by installing lazarus under raspbian jessie in the usual way.
This will install fpc 2.6.2 as well a more up to date version of lazarus.

[Mukatai]

Hi zog,

You confirmed what I thought.
And Raspbian Jessie are not available ? Only on experimental image on the forum ?

Thanks,
Bye.

[zog]

Hi again,
upgrading from to jessie to wheezy is quite easy.

sudo bash

Start with a fresh whezzy distro and edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list

pico /etc/apt/sources.list

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... es#p433904

"You can already switch to Raspbian Jessie if you want, just change all occurrences of "wheezy" or "stable" in /etc/apt/sources.list (or sources.list.d) to "Jessie", then do an "apt-get dist-upgrade" or "aptitude full-upgrade"

If it fails uninstall any broken packages and retry.

apt-get install fpc
apt-get install lazarus

you may have to install the sources yourself.

Don't get disheartend and give up!

[Mukatai]

Hi,

Thank you for this tutorial. I'll test it, I also try the experimental images available on the forum, I have an error message at launch Lazarus but it is the fpc 2.6.2.

@+

[tednilsen]

Great news!
Installing a fresh Jessie now

Anyone had any success with SDL2.0.1 and FPC / Lazarus?