I'm busy writing a bare-metal installer for FPC+Lazarus SVN (fpcup).
On Linux, that should just need gdb, subversion and build-essential packages.
For that, I had to get a working recent Lazarus as well as FPC. Below are my notes on how I got a Debian x64 unstable VM running, using the xfce4 display manager (doing the same for x86 now):
Debian unstable install:
start from a Debian testing or stable (squeeze) install CD: boot from CD, select install
On installation, deselect Graphical desktop environment, select ssh server, leave Standard system utilities selected
After installation is finished, go to unstable:
Note: you could use ssh to log in at this point
sed -i 's*stable*unstable*' /etc/apt/sources.list
#for safety, depending on what version we started with
sed -i 's*Wheezy*unstable*' /etc/apt/sources.list
sed -i 's*wheezy*unstable*' /etc/apt/sources.list
sed -i 's*Squeeze*unstable*' /etc/apt/sources.list
sed -i 's*squeeze*unstable*' /etc/apt/sources.list
aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade #this will upgrade to unstable
reboot
aptitude install build-essential gdb subversion openssh-server xfce4 xfce4-goodies #this will install prerequisites for compiling & the xfce desktop
#only if you don't use fpcup to get fpc svn version:
aptitude install fpc fpc-source #in Debian unstable, this will install fpc 2.6 (or higher)
#root user password root
#if not done already, add user pascaldev
adduser pascaldev
#enter password: root
#wide open samba file sharing with your windows/linux friends on the network:
aptitude install samba #install samba; choose workgroup name according to name on your network (usually the default, WORKGROUP, is fine)
# open up samba to anybody
# don't require logging in with a user account:
sed -i 's*# security = user* security = share*' /etc/samba/smb.conf
cat >> /etc/samba/smb.conf << "EOF_DOCUMENT"
#rao: added root dir for convenience
[root]
comment = Total filesystem
path = /
guest ok = yes
force user = root
read only = No
#rao: added developer dir
[pascaldev]
comment = Total filesystem
path = /home/pascaldev/
guest ok = yes
force user = pascaldev
read only = No
EOF_DOCUMENT
service samba restart #apply config changes
#Try to get Lazarus:
##this did not work, probably a bad snapshot today
##as root
#cd ~
#wget
ftp://ftp.hu.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/snapshots/lazarus-0.9.31.35140-20120206.amd64.deb.tar#tar xvf lazarus-0.9.31.35140-20120206.amd64.deb.tar
#rm lazarus-0.9.31.35140-20120206.amd64.deb.tar
#mkdir notused
#mv *qt*.deb notused #we're using gtk here, this will error out
#dpkg -i *.deb
#compiling myself did work
su - pascaldev
svn co
http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/trunk ~/lazarus --revision HEAD
cd ~/lazarus
make all
mkdir ~/lazdevmanual
startx #start xfce4
In a terminal in xfce4, run
~/lazarus/startlazarus --primary-config-path=~/lazdevmanual