Getting Started with Free Pascal

[TonyR500]

I am trying to improve my knowledge of Pascal and have down loaded the Win 32 version which comes as a self extracting exe file. Now it sits on my hard drive and, what next?

I understand from a colleague that I should be seeing a desktop screen with menu choices across the top. I have no idea how to get to this.

I have no clue on how to use this compiler and haven't so far found any very elementary documentation on how to get started.

I would be grateful for some assistance please.

Many Thanks

[ASBzone]

I am trying to improve my knowledge of Pascal and have down loaded the Win 32 version which comes as a self extracting exe file. Now it sits on my hard drive and, what next?

I understand from a colleague that I should be seeing a desktop screen with menu choices across the top. I have no idea how to get to this.

I have no clue on how to use this compiler and haven't so far found any very elementary documentation on how to get started.

I would be grateful for some assistance please.

Many Thanks

Hi TonyR500,

I would recommend that you go to the following link (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=downloads) and download the appropriate version of FreePascal with the Lazarus IDE.

You can choose the Windows 32-bit version as you did previously for FPC only.

Once you have run the executable, you will have a little bit more of a jump start into looking at FreePascal and Lazarus.

You can start here (https://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation) for documentation.

[Warfley]

Have you installed Lazarus or only the FPC. The FPC is the compiler, while Lazarus is an IDE (Integrated development environment that contains an editor, can call the compiler, use a debugger and all the stuff you need).

I would recommend using Lazarus and not plain FPC.

If you Installed lazarus it is rather easy: Start Lazarus (probably somewhere in your start menu)
Now you should see a bunch of windows, amongst others a bar on the top containing a lot of icons, a WYSIWYG form editor (a Window called Form1 with dots on it) and a source code editor.
I would recommend first to get into the basics without the GUI stuff, for this simply go to (in the menu) File->New and select Program. Now a new Lazarus project should open with one Main Pascal File in the editor.
In the up most window there is a little green arrow button, use this to compile your code and start your application.

Thats the core basics, now you can start hacking

[mr-highball]

Here's some "how to's" as well,
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Portal:HowTo_Demos

Another useful tool for setting up fpc/lazarus is fpcupdeluxe. It makes installing things real simple
https://github.com/LongDirtyAnimAlf/fpcupdeluxe/releases/download/1.8.0a/fpcupdeluxe-i386-win32.exe

Above is the link for windows. Just download, run the program, pick a install location (documents/desktop/ etc...), press the button install fpc + lazarus, it will put a lazarus shortcut on ypur desktop (just run it)

[jamie]

Ot but I think fpc should be renamed to FOPC "free objects
 Pascal compiler"

The current name kind leads many into the direction of non object compiler
Back in the days of VAX.

[PascalDragon]

Ot but I think fpc should be renamed to FOPC "free objects
 Pascal compiler"

Free Pascal is a multi dialect compiler, it supports non-object oriented dialects (TP, ISO Pascal, Extended ISO Pascal, FPC) just as object oriented ones (Delphi, MacPas, ObjFPC), thus it's correct to promote it as a Pascal compiler as that is the superset of the dialects.

[TRon]

Have you installed Lazarus or only the FPC. The FPC is the compiler, while Lazarus is an IDE (Integrated development environment that contains an editor, can call the compiler, use a debugger and all the stuff you need).

I would recommend using Lazarus and not plain FPC.

Small correction as FreePascal comes delivered with a text-mode IDE as well as all its additional tools.

I agree though, that for new-comers it would probably be easier to get into Pascal programming by using the Lazarus IDE (unless you are used to or expect to develop in textmode/shell environments).

Free Pascal is a multi dialect compiler, it supports non-object oriented dialects (TP, ISO Pascal, Extended ISO Pascal, FPC) just as object oriented ones (Delphi, MacPas, ObjFPC), thus it's correct to promote it as a Pascal compiler as that is the superset of the dialects.

The problem though is that not everyone (not being familiar with FreePascal) knows about the last part of that statement.

The wikipedia page does it fairly good by mentioning the dialect(s) from the get-go, but the freepascal.org page however does not. I more or less guess that this is the landing-page and introduction for most newcomers ?

[PascalDragon]

Free Pascal is a multi dialect compiler, it supports non-object oriented dialects (TP, ISO Pascal, Extended ISO Pascal, FPC) just as object oriented ones (Delphi, MacPas, ObjFPC), thus it's correct to promote it as a Pascal compiler as that is the superset of the dialects.

The problem though is that not everyone (not being familiar with FreePascal) knows about the last part of that statement.

The wikipedia page does it fairly good by mentioning the dialect(s) from the get-go, but the freepascal.org page however does not. I more or less guess that this is the landing-page and introduction for most newcomers ?

It's mentioned further down in Features. Though feel free to report a bug. We've only recently reworked the target list at the top.

Edit: Oh and then there's the title: Free Pascal - Advanced open source Pascal compiler for Pascal and Object Pascal

[VTwin]

Perhaps this video series would be of assistance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VPvQ_dXMhw

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PuvsyLapgw&feature=youtu.be

[Handoko]

Also, this New Users Portal:
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Portal:New_Users

There new users can find many useful information, tutorials and demos.