And the Lazarus/LCL project has enough problems trying to get to grips with things like gtk3.
Qt5 and above, which do Android and iOS, are already embraced by Lazarus. We are kind of talking core elements of why people love Lazarus and the LCL, "Write Once, Compile Anywhere".
There are some who would argue that Android and iOS are so overwhelmingly important that desktop OSes will shortly be eclipsed. I'm not one of them.
I agree that desktop OSes will be with us for many years to come, particularly because many people want bigger screens and to a lesser extent more storage. Many people will buy laptops or plug their desktop computer (which are increasingly small form factor) into their TV.
Android could arguably replace Windows (check out
https://www.android-x86.org/ and others) and to a lesser degree macOS, for the desktop. A huge number of people already carry around Android phones and are very familiar with using them. It's not that big of a leap for people to use Android laptops or plug their Android device up to/WiFi into/use the cloud for large external storage and also connect the Android to their flat screen TV.
That Google hasn't made a stronger push to bring this about (Android on the desktop/laptop), has arguably to do with them fumbling around with the Chrome OS and Chromebooks (as if they don't already have access to enough personal information). Android is open-source, and a very short jump to the Linux world
. Where with Chrome OS, that's totally under Google's control. But, Google may at some point change direction.
Many people are indicating that Apple appears to be merging iOS with macOS, or will outright replace macOS with iOS at some point not too far away. More and more macOS features keep getting added to iOS.
There are others who would argue that the important thing is being able to implement apps based on an HTML/CSS GUI which is an idea that's been around since Netscape proclaimed itself the Universal Desktop in about '95. I don't think I'm one of those either...
Oh, we agree on this point.
One possibility would be to completely decouple the Android-specific part of the LCL into a separate project, but there's already enough of a problem with occasional issues with LAMW being interpreted as a weakness in the main Lazarus IDE.
That would be a terrible thing to do. Lazarus and the LCL has embraced Android for many years already, with many people already have built and are maintaining Android apps. We are really just talking about the other side of the mobile equation, more strongly embrace iOS too or that there would be an equivalent project like Laz4Android, thus Laz4iOS.
In short, I don't have an answer other than suggesting that the people who complain about deficiencies in any particular LCL variant should be encouraged to engage with the development and maintenance projects... and I have very little expectation that that would be productive.
Not everyone can be a developer. Usually, you are talking people who are exceptional and/or very experienced, that will walk that path. Most people aren't professional programmers, and a lot of people only engage in programming as a hobby. Climbing the ranks to become an advanced enough programmer, in addition to time and interest, is not the easiest thing for everyone. So, it might be a matter of trying to more actively find or encourage those with the needed abilities and interest.