Does Lazarus work okay with Windows (XP and 7)?

[TurboRascal]

Actually, the windows installer could be made better for multi-architecture install; for example, if I install 64-bit Lazarus, then 32-bit one (or vice versa), the last one installed will take over the desktop and startmenu icons, ask to install in the same directory as the first one, and if the uninstaller is run, only the last one will be uninstalled...

The installers could be made different, to enable one to have both arch versions installed painlessly in parallel on 64-bit machines...

[MartienLaz]

A.S. the version I downloaded and installed is lazarus-0.9.28.2-fpc-2.2.4-win32.exe

[MartienLaz]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to make Lazarus work on my 64-bit Windows 7 machine last week I hadn't had much time to look at it further but I will report all errors I found in a more detailed way so maybe it can helpful for me and for others. It's a pity because I really love the concept of open source software especially when it supplies a fully functional programming environment.

[Marc]

@TurboRascal: you don't need a 64bit lazarus to develop a 64bit app. You only need a 64bit compiler/linker/debugger, and 64bit ppus. So one lazarus.exe is enough.

[TurboRascal]

@Marc: you are right. I was just thinking that installer for the 64-bit version could help by installing both toolchains...

Although perhaps the best solution is not using any installers at all

[marcov]

@TurboRascal: you don't need a 64bit lazarus to develop a 64bit app. You only need a 64bit compiler/linker/debugger, and 64bit ppus. So one lazarus.exe is enough.

I don't think most packages are prepared to keep designtime units (which must be strictly 32-bit in such case) and the runtime units (64-bit) apart?

[MartienLaz]

It's some time ago as I was really very busy with other things but now I came a lot further :  I uninstalled lazarus and there was still another one in the c:\lazarus folder, I just removed the folder (no uninstall options) and cleaned the registry with ccleaner. Then I installed again the newest stable 32 bit version. Only the first time Lazarus still grumbled as it could not find the debugger in the Lazarus32 folder although it was in the Lazarus folder, anyway now it seems to work again! Thanks for the help.

[lainz]

It's some time ago as I was really very busy with other things but now I came a lot further :  I uninstalled lazarus and there was still another one in the c:\lazarus folder, I just removed the folder (no uninstall options) and cleaned the registry with ccleaner. Then I installed again the newest stable 32 bit version. Only the first time Lazarus still grumbled as it could not find the debugger in the Lazarus32 folder although it was in the Lazarus folder, anyway now it seems to work again! Thanks for the help.

You must delete user settings

C:\users\username\appdata\local\lazarus

[MartienLaz]

Thanks Lainz, I took a small glance at that settings folder, as for now it works but I saw there are  a lot of xml files, obviously it is possible to edit them for troubleshooting reasons.

[Zoran]

A.S. Can I install both versions e.g. in different folders? I like lazarus'  slogan Write once compile everywhere and as such this works okay for me but I am still a little bit puzzled about the most efficient way to do it. Let us say I just doubleclick on a lpr file, I can imagine there will rise some problems as I will have to decide which version of Lazarus should open the lpr. More generally some tutorials about the whole installation process would be welcome since I really like the whole Lazarus project but finetuning the installation turns out to be a little bit tricky

Take a look at this wiki page: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Multiple_Lazarus. Just take care of one thing -- the author of this page uses lazarus.exe to start the IDE, which is bad practise, you should use startlazarus.exe instead. The --primary-config-path parameter works with startlazarus as well.

The point is that you should take care that you use different config folders for different lazarus instances. You should always start lazarus with

startlazarus --primary-config-path=<some path>

. You can put on your desktop two shortcuts to your two instances of startlazarus.exe with --primary-config-path parameter pointing to differnt folders.