Lazarus 2.x for MacOS (Big Sur and Catalina) ... broken and abandoned?

[ArminLinder]

Hi guys,

right now I found no working way to get Lazarus 2.x up and running on MacOS. I wasted three days now, and tried Big Sur as well as Catalina, both fail miserably. Big Sur - with the latest trunk version of Lazarus - installs the IDE, but fails at first exception because the LLDB debugger is not yet supported, and GDB isn't available for the platform any longer. I went back to Catalina, and managed to install XCode 10 (the last version suporting GDB, AFAIK), but the XCode command line tools are not available any longer.. Seems the proper installation of XCode, GDB and SVN would not help much anyway, because FPCUpDeluxe crashes right when I start it. So there is not just one problem, curcial components needed for the build stack and proper debugging crash, or aren't available at all. The crashes are fatal, each one terminates, the product is, IMHO, absolutely unusable.

I remebered, 5 years ago when I made first contact with Lazarus, I was impressed by Lazarus multi-platform capabilities. I tested with Windows, Linux and MacOS, and was impressed. I dragged an old box with Mountain Lion out of the trashbin, it still had Lazarus 1.6 on it, and ... worked. Flawlessly. At least regarding the tests I have thrown at it. Unfortunately my current source code uses generics and thus doesn't work with the old FPC environment any more ...

So gone are the days where MacOS is supported by Lazarus?

Armin

[Jonas Maebe]

I went back to Catalina, and managed to install XCode 10 (the last version suporting GDB, AFAIK), but the XCode command line tools are not available any longer..

All previous Xcode and command line tools installers are available from https://developer.apple.com/download/all/ (if xcode-select --install doesn't work for some reason)

Seems the proper installation of XCode, GDB and SVN would not help much anyway, because FPCUpDeluxe crashes right when I start it.

Best report that at https://github.com/LongDirtyAnimAlf/fpcupdeluxe/issues

[ArminLinder]

Thanks for your reply. I knew that website, and got XCode 10 from there. Unfortunately there are no command line tools for XCode 10. There are a lot of other versions, but 10 is missing.

XCode 11 is available from the Apple store, and won't install on Catalina. They install fine on Big Sur, including the tools, but on Big Sur I won't get any debugger, since LLDB support is far from ready.

Seems I am stuck in the middle of nowhere. Pulling all the bits and pieces together it seems impossible tuo run Lazarus on Big Sur yet, no debugger support means no Lazarus. SO my best bet seems to be Catalina. But there I get no XCode tools.

Any ideas which way I need to go, to get a working Lazarus on Catalina?

Thnx, Armin.

[six1]

You're lost Nimral; totally   

[dbannon]

...... but on Big Sur I won't get any debugger, since LLDB support is far from ready.
.....

Are you sure of that ?  Is that a Big Sur specific problem ?  I have been using LLDB on Sierra for quite some time.

Davo (someone who knows nothing about MacOS)

[PascalDragon]

Seems I am stuck in the middle of nowhere. Pulling all the bits and pieces together it seems impossible tuo run Lazarus on Big Sur yet, no debugger support means no Lazarus. SO my best bet seems to be Catalina. But there I get no XCode tools.

There are many people who are using Lazarus on Big Sur (both Intel and M1), so it's probably something that went wrong on your side.

[six1]

it works, but not out of the box!

Install LazDebuggerFpLLdb Package
Select "LLDB debugger (with fpdebug)(Beta) in Debug Settings.

Works like a Charm

[ArminLinder]

Are you sure of that ?  Is that a Big Sur specific problem ?  I have been using LLDB on Sierra for quite some time.

Davo (someone who knows nothing about MacOS)

For sure I am not sure. Without a definitive and precise installation guide containing version numbers and check instructions for each and every required component nobody can be sure about nothig, there is always room for "something" which went wrong "somewhere".

Regarding the Debugger: I got it up on Big Sur, saw "LLDB (Alpha (!)" in project settings, thought "oh my god ...", fired up my very first test program and ran into its very first exception (I deliberately passed an invalid file name), and the debugger crashed immedately. See Attachment. I fired up the program again, and let the debugger run into a breakpoint (which it did, so the basic installation should be allright) and tried to inspect a procedure parameter of type string. Not very complicated task. The debugger showed something like "Variable <String> = ???". Wow, not quite helpful information. I Tried to inspect a private field of an object, same problem. I Tried to inspect a local variable, same problem. This is where I gave up. I thought, well, they said Alpha, this looks like Alpha, and concentrated on getting GDB up on the Mac. I picked up some Info that GDB was part of XCode 10 - meanwhile I suspect this was false Internet rumours, and ran into the next problem: XCode command line tools ist not available for XCode 10, though numerous other version (older & later) are.

[ArminLinder]

Are you sure of that ?  Is that a Big Sur specific problem ?  I have been using LLDB on Sierra for quite some time.

Davo (someone who knows nothing about MacOS)

For sure I am not sure. Without a definitive and precise installation guide containing version numbers and check instructions for each and every required component nobody can be sure about nothig, there is always room for "something" which went wrong "somewhere".

Regarding the Debugger: I got it up on Big Sur, saw "LLDB (Alpha (!)" in project settings, thought "oh my god ...", fired up my very first test program and ran into its very first exception (I deliberately passed an invalid file name), and the debugger crashed immedately. See Attachment. I fired up the program again, and let the debugger run into a breakpoint (which it did, so the basic installation should be allright) and tried to inspect a procedure parameter of type string. Not very complicated task. The debugger showed something like "Variable <String> = ???". Wow, not quite helpful information. I Tried to inspect a private field of an object, same problem. I Tried to inspect a local variable, same problem. This is where I gave up. I thought, well, they said Alpha, this looks like Alpha, and concentrated on getting GDB up on the Mac. I picked up some Info that GDB was part of XCode 10 - meanwhile I suspect this was false Internet rumours, and ran into the next problem: XCode command line tools ist not available for XCode 10, though numerous other version (older & younger) are.

[ArminLinder]

Sorry for the misplaced quote tag. The text is still readable above, here are the screenshots ...

[dbannon]

Sounds like six1 is using a different LLDB package.

@six1, could you please state exactly where you obtained this package and maybe add a couple of lines to the wiki page so other users can easily follow it ?

No point in me doing it, I do not have a current MacOS platform to test on ....

Davo

[six1]

Install Package: LazDebugerFpLldb 0.0
Setup Debuger as shown
Use Dwarf-3

[ArminLinder]

Thanks for the hint, but this doesn't work on my machine (Catalina, will test on BigSur in a minute).

I installed the library, re-compiled the IDE, but LLDB (Beta) still isn't an available option. There must be more ...

Armin.

[ArminLinder]

Finally, with patient help from Michael and DonAlfredo, I got this thing up and running "good enough" in a sense that it's not completely unusable. The IDE is working, including AnchorDocking and Cody, and I got the same (albeit limited) debugging capabilities like under Windows.

Nevertheless, IMHO there is a long, long way to go, until Lazarus on the Mac comes close to the level it has reached on Windows and Linux. I'll continue to develop on one of those, and use Lazarus only for testing and resolving compatbility issues.

For the complete solution, pease see here (German):

https://www.lazarusforum.de/viewtopic.php?p=123061#p123061

I'll also try to update the wiki this weekend, corrections and comments from people with more Lazarus/Mac experience than me, and/or better English language skills are very welcome to do proof-reading and add comments.

Armin.