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Date:      Wed, 1 Jun 2011 17:23:37 -0500
From:      Rugxulo <rugxulo@gmail.com>
To:        ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   GPC 2006 (Pascal) -- deprecated or "expired"??
Message-ID:  <BANLkTimmQ7UYubpe0R9NYCVDqXhApcSdGA@mail.gmail.com>

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Hi, (more details far below)

It seems somebody isn't very knowledgeable about GPC.   :-(     Here's
the real deal: *BSD hates GPL, esp. GPLv3, and I think GPC is indeed
v3 (though it's only using GCC 3.4.4 or buggy newer 4.1.2 backends,
nothing beyond that). Since there are backend bugs that cannot
(easily) be fixed (and no help from GCC or GNU upstream), the project
has basically died for lack of updates since 2007. (It's fully written
in C except for RTL. Stupid "tree nodes", heh.) They did barely
attempt a revival late last year, but nothing came of it (yet). In
other words, without major changes or fixes, it cannot live on as-is.
And nobody really ships GCC 3.x anymore. Plus, 4.1.2 is just too buggy
(says Frank) to use, even compared to older 3.4.4.

BTW, two more corrections:  the latest version is not from 2006 but
instead "20070904". Oddly enough, that refers to the patches and not
the GCC versions. So you can indeed (accidentally) be using GCC 3.4.4
with older GPC (2006), which isn't as good. In fact, I'm not sure P5
will compile with it.

GCC is kinda a pain. Note that technically I've almost never used BSD
at all (except very very barely in VirtualBox). But I know that you
need pretty much the same version (or near enough) to rebuild itself.
I would indeed like to have latest / last GPC "20070904" on FreeBSD,
even if it means using old FreeBSD 6.4. That's the version I barely
have installed in VirtualBox. (It can't be that impossible to build,
can it?)

P5 is Scott Moore's (very recent) update of P4 (subset) to fully
support ISO 7185 only ("standard" Pascal, the unextended original
Wirth dialect). Unlike FreePascal, GPC supports ISO 7185
(classic/standard Pascal) and ISO 10206 (Extended Pascal, which is
fairly rare). So suggesting FPC isn't a very decent alternative if
someone needs true standard(s) compatibility. I'm not saying FPC is
bad, just totally different!! In other words, so far, GPC 2007 is the
only (easy) way I know of compiling P5 for FreeBSD!!

P5 is "only" ISO 7185 and doesn't support files (yet) except prd and
prr, which means you can't really open any extra files (yet). It
"compiles" and "interprets" itself, though. Basically, it's two files:
pcom (from pcom.pas) and pint (from pint.pas). BTW, did I mention it's
"public domain"? Oh, I forgot, BSD supports Linux emulation, so you
could technically just use that (though that's not ideal). Heck, I'm
personally more interested in a DJGPP binary than any other. But
having it on FreeBSD wouldn't hurt either. See below URL for Scott's
work. (Yes, he plans to extend it to P6, which will be a "true
compiler", but that hasn't started just yet, at least not publically.)

http://www.standardpascal.com/p5.html

==========
http://www.freshports.org/lang/gpc/

 gpc 20060325_2 lang Deleted  on this many watch lists=1 search for
ports that depend on this port
    Deprecated DEPRECATED: development has ceased; use lang/fpc instead
    Expired This port expired on: 2011-04-11
    GNU Pascal compiler

    There is no maintainer for this port.
    Any concerns regarding this port should be directed to the FreeBSD
Ports mailing list via ports@FreeBSD.org search for ports maintained
by this maintainer
    Port Added: 29 May 2000 01:05:51
    License: GPLv2



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