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Author Topic: [solved]How to install help?  (Read 3312 times)

andyH

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[solved]How to install help?
« on: April 17, 2019, 08:07:22 pm »
First post - so a bit of background. Cut my teeth on Turbo pascal  in the 1980's (V1 - when it first came out, loved Borland), wrote a fair amount of code, probably around 20k lines. Now using it again. I'm running lazarus 1.8.2 installed under linux (mint 19.0) and have written a few hundred lines of code - strictly console apps. Now starting to come to grips with GUI apps, and that's where my problem starts - my mindset is SSADM and am struggling with OOP.

So I need help, for starters, help within the ide. Installed the lazarus-doc-1.8 package via the software manager in mint.
  • Help > help leads to an empty window where I find I can open a .chm file - searched and found /usr/share/doc/lazarus/1.82/lcl. Seems to provide a lot, but as example can't find Tmemo. Are there other .chm files. And how do you make it persistent so it opens this file automatically.
  • Help > Online help : The help database "StartPage" was unable to find file "/usr/lib/lazarus/1.8.2//docs/index.html". So where is it? I suspect a problem with the //.
  • Tools > options > help options and external - I have no idea what to do here?
  • Did find http://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Help_in_the_IDE - not much help, written around windows not linux.

Did have a rummage around and found a README.txt in /usr/lib/lazarus/1.82/components/chmhelp - "This is a basic HOWTO for integrating lhelp into the Lazarus IDE". Tried following instructions but 'Components Menu choose "Open Package File"' - no, but have package > open package file. Opened "chmhelppkg.lpk". Now click "Install" - no install button, did file compile - ok, then use > install. Rebuild lazarus - yes, failed - cannot find lazcontroldsgn used by lazarus... If it worked I suspect it would have failed as not running as root and no permissions to write in /usr/lib????

So you can see I'm confused and would appreciate some help in getting help to work.

Secondary question - any good reference books or other sources on lazarus? I have a couple of beginner/idiot's guides on lazarus, but what I need is reference info. As an example, Tstringlists - what are all the methods, etc. available to use with them, or the same with Tmemo, and so on. If I know a method exists I can google its usage, but if I don't know it exists...

Thanks in advance.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2019, 08:52:16 pm by andyH »

dsiders

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2019, 09:04:13 pm »
I know nothing about Linux Mint, so...

Help files should be installed in the $(lazarusdir)/docs/html or $(lazarusdir)/docs/chm directories. If they're somewhere else on your system, that's a LM packaging issue. Copy or move them to the correct directory. Or SymLink them if you love a challenge. It sounds like the Help Viewer (LHelp) is already installed.

That should be all that's needed.

Hope that helps :)
Preview Lazarus 3.99 documentation at: https://dsiders.gitlab.io/lazdocsnext

john horst

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2019, 10:06:36 pm »
I would avoid using the Package Manager (Deb / Mint / Ubuntu release) version of FPC / Lazarus. Use the Stable Debs from SourceForge or the Devel Versions. Things are seriously broke, bad paths and dated with OS release packages.

avra

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2019, 11:33:41 pm »
I would use fpcupdeluxe to install Lazarus and FPC. It has an option to include help and build help viewer. Basically you get out of the box ready to use help.
ct2laz - Conversion between Lazarus and CodeTyphon
bithelpers - Bit manipulation for standard types
pasettimino - Siemens S7 PLC lib

andyH

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2019, 12:25:13 am »
Quote
I would avoid using the Package Manager (Deb / Mint / Ubuntu release) version of FPC / Lazarus.
On this particular laptop I did install from the package manager, and apart from my problems with help, it works (at least with the stuff I've done to date). Did have lots of problems doing the same with mint 18.x - lazarus + fpc was seriously broke and installing from downloaded debs was the only way I got it working. On another laptop think I've got 1.8.4 so must have installed from deb.

fpcupdeluxe sounds promising, downloaded it, so I'll give that a try. Failing that I'll re-install from debs.

Final, maybe stupid, question - what is meant by $(lazarusdir)? To me it's command substitution in bash, so I would expect echo  "Location is $(lazarusdir) " to generate some output, it doesn't so I'm wrong.

Thanks for the responses.

dsiders

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2019, 12:38:11 am »
Quote
I would avoid using the Package Manager (Deb / Mint / Ubuntu release) version of FPC / Lazarus.
On this particular laptop I did install from the package manager, and apart from my problems with help, it works (at least with the stuff I've done to date). Did have lots of problems doing the same with mint 18.x - lazarus + fpc was seriously broke and installing from downloaded debs was the only way I got it working. On another laptop think I've got 1.8.4 so must have installed from deb.

fpcupdeluxe sounds promising, downloaded it, so I'll give that a try. Failing that I'll re-install from debs.

Final, maybe stupid, question - what is meant by $(lazarusdir)? To me it's command substitution in bash, so I would expect echo  "Location is $(lazarusdir) " to generate some output, it doesn't so I'm wrong.

Thanks for the responses.

The directory where lazarus is installed.
Preview Lazarus 3.99 documentation at: https://dsiders.gitlab.io/lazdocsnext

andyH

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2019, 08:50:32 pm »
I now have help  :D
Removed the version of lazarus installed via synaptic package manager, downloaded the latest debs from sourceforge, installed - and help works! Now running V2.0.2.

Thanks for the suggestion not to use lazarus versions in mint/ubuntu repositories.

A small step in catching up with all the changes made to pascal in the years since I used it a lot.

Did try and fail with fpcupdeluxe, interested in why, but purely academic:
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. FPCUPdeluxe V1.6.2s for x86_64-linux-gtk2
  2.  
  3. Going to install/update FPC and Lazarus with given options.
  4. FPCUP(deluxe) is starting up.
  5.  
  6. Bootstrap dir:         /home/andy/fpcupdeluxe/fpcbootstrap
  7. FPC URL:               https://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/tags/release_3_0_4
  8. FPC options:          
  9. FPC source directory:  /home/andy/fpcupdeluxe/fpcsrc
  10. FPC install directory: /home/andy/fpcupdeluxe/fpc
  11. Lazarus URL:           https://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/tags/lazarus_2_0_2
  12. Lazarus options:      
  13. Lazarus directory:     /home/andy/fpcupdeluxe/lazarus
  14.  
  15. Please stand back and enjoy !
  16.  
  17. fpcupdeluxe: info: 18-4-19 19:43:03: fpcupdeluxe: V078 (20190416) started.
  18. fpcupdeluxe: info: FPCNativeInstaller (CleanModule: FPC): No FPC source [yet] ... nothing to be done
  19. fpcupdeluxe: ERROR: FPCNativeInstaller (CheckAndGetTools): Could not find SVN executable. Please make sure it is installed.
  20.  
  21.  
  22. ERROR: Fpcupdeluxe fatal error !


avra

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Re: How to install help?
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2019, 10:23:44 pm »
Did try and fail with fpcupdeluxe, interested in why, but purely academic
If you put that error output into this thread it will get more attention:
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,34645.msg317469.html#msg317469

My wild guess would be that 2.0.2 is so new that fpcupdeluxe does not handle it yet. You could try with 2.0 fixes. fpcupdeluxe will not mess other Lazarus/FPC installations.
ct2laz - Conversion between Lazarus and CodeTyphon
bithelpers - Bit manipulation for standard types
pasettimino - Siemens S7 PLC lib

 

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