Hello,

I have been away for a while, but I am back to working on AROS and Amiga development.

I am developing a set of Lazarus/FPC tools primarily for AROS. My current development environment is Linux Mint with Lazarus 3.0 and FPC 3.2.2. The main application builds and runs on Linux, but I am now working on the AROS port.

At the moment I only have access to an older AROS cross-toolchain based on FPC 3.1.1. I can compile and launch the application on AROS One, but I am encountering several LCL/MUI compatibility issues, such as unsupported .lfm properties and TListView report/column problems.

I would like to know:

1. Is there an available AROS cross-compilation toolchain based on FPC 3.2.2 or newer?
2. Is there a matching Lazarus 3.x build environment for AROS?
3. Are prebuilt Linux-hosted cross-compilers available, or must they be built manually?
4. What is currently considered the recommended development environment for targeting AROS from Linux?
5. Are there known limitations or unsupported LCL controls in the current AROS LCL implementation?
6. Has anyone successfully built larger Lazarus applications on AROS using Lazarus 3.x?

Any pointers to repositories, Docker images, build scripts, or documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Lazarus for aros?

I found these links:

https://wiki.free...l.org/AROS

http://fpcamigawi...=Main_Page

Have a look here https://blog.alb42.de/fpc-aros/. FPC 3.2.2 is available for AROS but only for AROS 32bit (ABIv0)

Yes I tried that page but unfortunately the download links don't seem to work

I could not find any of the downloads from these locations.

Try using a different browser or lower the security risk of downloading from HTTP link. I just downloaded this http://www.alb42.de/fpc/fpc-3.2.2-i386-aros.lha but had to use Firefox

Great, thank you!

I have downloaded ALB42’s FPC 3.2.2 package for AROS:

fpc-3.2.2-i386-aros.lha

From what I understand, this package provides an i386-aros compiler and precompiled AROS units, but the compiler runs on AROS itself, not on Linux. My Linux FPC 3.2.2 installation appears to support AROS only as x86_64-aros, not i386-aros.

My current development setup on Linux Mint is:

Lazarus 3.0
FPC 3.2.2
target application: AIDEa, a Lazarus/LCL IDE-style application

On Linux, the project builds correctly.

What I would like to know is:

Is there already an available Lazarus/LCL package for AROS i386, preferably with the MUI LCL interface already compiled?

Or is there an available Linux-hosted cross-compiler/toolchain that can build Lazarus/LCL applications for i386-aros?

At the moment it looks like my options are:

build everything natively inside an AROS One VM using ALB42’s i386-aros FPC package;
switch to AROS x86_64 and use the Linux-hosted compiler support;
build or obtain a proper Linux-to-i386-AROS cross-compiler.

Has anyone already done this recently, or is there a known package/toolchain I should use?

Thanks.

You can always look at the Lazarus Virtual Machine or Docker image, which gives you a preconfigured Linux environment with the ability to cross compile for AROS. It's available on the same site from ALB42 aka Marcus Sackrow

https://blog.alb42.de/virtual-lazarus/

I suggest trying to contact him directly as well if you have specific questions:
https://www.alb42.de

As for LCL, this is his latest status report:

https://fpcamigawiki.alb42.de/index.php?title=LCL_status

You may want to click around this blog. It has a lot of FPC setup and information about Free Pascal on AROS.

Thank you, I will also try to get in touch with ALB42

Hi Danilos,


Available as in a simple download and install/extract ? Not that I am aware of.

FPC 3.3.1 (trunk/main) has the latest changes. 3.2.2 is a bit old by now (the release schedule of FPC is a PITA atm)


Not for AROS itself but you could use the Lazarus IDE for cross-compilation to target AROS though LCL itself is not a good experience (if one at all) for AROS.


afaik manual build. Not a biggy though. The fpc makefile takes care of almost everything except for the binutils (vasm/vlink)

If you need help please let know.


With regards to FPC or programming in general ?

FPC does not require much for cross development you can use whatever editor and resources/tools you want and just cross-compile (which does require a good configured Free Pascal setup).

ALB42 invested a lot of time implementing MUI classes for FPC (even has a small visual editor) so that you could make use of those, and there exist fpGUI (which also has a small visual editor).


Yes, almost all of them are not performant on AROS.

The LCL vs AROS/Amiga OS GUI philosophy simple does not match up. imho it is a bad experience though you van use it if wanted. It is just that you keep fighting either the OS or the LCL which isn't actually worth the effort. Hence the other available solutions.


As others have already mentioned have a look at ALB42's blog site. ALB has a lot of bigger applications written with FPC in pascal
that for either in or for AROS. Do note that most of them are not depending on the LCL though (because formentioned issues).

AROS and FPC are a good match as long as you are aware of the limitations and strengths and I have use it in a production environment for many years. As long as you know what you are doing then you can create whatever application you have in mind though you would have to get rid a bit of the LCL mindset: you can not just drop a component on a form and be done with it. You really should try approach from the other way around e.g. how can I make FPC play ball with MUI/intuition.

In case questions, please ask.

Hi Magorium,

Thank you for the detailed reply, I appreciate it.

I have managed to get some LCL controls working on AROS. Some controls behave reasonably well, while others have layout and rendering issues, so I understand the concerns regarding LCL on AROS. That said, from my testing it seems usable for certain types of applications, even if it is not always an ideal match for the platform.

I am also experimenting with ALB42's MUI libraries. Initially I had some trouble locating and rebuilding the required components, but I now have them compiling again and I am starting to test them more seriously.

Previously I was using FPC 3.1.1, so moving to 3.2.2 already feels like a significant improvement for me. I may take a look at the current trunk release at some point, but for now I would prefer not to get too sidetracked and instead focus on making tangible progress.

My longer-term goal is to provide a development environment where people can develop for AROS either directly on AROS itself or from an external platform such as Linux. In that scenario, MUI-based applications are of course the natural choice on AROS, but they cannot be used directly on non-Amiga-like platforms, so I am interested in exploring both approaches.

Overall, I think the tools that are available today provide most of the necessary building blocks. My previous attempts were a bit challenging, but I now have a much better understanding of the ecosystem and I am hopeful that I can move forward more concretely.

Thanks again for the information and the offer to help. I'll definitely keep in touch as I progress.

Best regards,
DaniloS