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Author Topic: Lazarus IDE alternatives  (Read 10922 times)

BobDog

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Lazarus IDE alternatives
« on: December 12, 2021, 12:17:59 pm »
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I've split these off-topic responses from the original unrelated thread and moved them here where it could be considered to be topical. Enjoy O:-)

Trev


I don't use the Lazarus Ide. I use Geany ide. (or the devpas ide sometimes), I use windows.
If I need a unit I find it from the freepascal installation and pop it into a dedicated folder which I point to via command line options in Geany.
Not using Lazarus is a huge disadvantage in a Lazarus forum (of course), but I like freepascal and still like to contribute in a restricted way.
I have Lazarus on board, as it were, but the more I use it the less I like it, sorry to say, but there are not many pascal forums about these days.
(Probably get booted out now)
Good Luck.



« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 06:21:21 am by trev »

Tony Stone

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2021, 10:39:47 pm »
(Probably get booted out now)
Good Luck.

 ;D

Very doubtful!  Of all of the forums I am on I think this one here may have some of the coolest people!  I used to use Geany until i got back into Pascal.  Geany is nice, clean and simple... like Lazarus.   :)

Handoko

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2021, 04:59:12 am »
I am curious, please tell me more.

I know Lazarus-IDE is not perfect, I experience some minor issues too. But, it has many useful features. Like: hint when mouse hovering on identifier, ctrl+click on identifier, code completion, desktop (customize-able layout), project inspector, well-integrated with debugger and good tool for building GUI applications.

I don't mean the others are inferior, but I would like know what are the interesting features of the Geany, Dev-Pascal IDE and others. Maybe I might use them too.

(sorry off-topic)

ccrause

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2021, 07:20:49 am »
I have Lazarus on board, as it were, but the more I use it the less I like it,
An IDE needs to complement your way of doing things, else it is more of a hindrance than helpful. In my opinion Lazarus is particularly suited to people who have worked with Delphi before.

Another IDE to consider is MSEide, quite a bit different compared to Lazarus.

BSaidus

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #4 on: December 13, 2021, 09:31:35 am »
hhhh,
Lazarus is powerfull, Stable IDE, maybe you do not habituated to use it, you can customize it to be small if you delete some packages.
First times using it , I have the same opition about it, Now, I do not use other IDE then it.
Even Delphi I do not open it.
May be there is little functionnality that are not enaught done, But It is the best.
 It is very stable.
lazarus 1.8.4 Win8.1 / cross FreeBSD
dhukmucmur vernadh!

Martin_fr

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #5 on: December 13, 2021, 11:21:56 am »
I don't use the Lazarus Ide. I use Geany ide. (or the devpas ide sometimes), I use windows.
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Not using Lazarus is a huge disadvantage in a Lazarus forum (of course), but I like freepascal and still like to contribute in a restricted way.
The forum has an entire FreePascal section, that has nothing to do with Lazarus. And many other discussions are about the language and not the IDE.

Despite the name of the forum, it's shared with the fpc community. So its two in one.

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I have Lazarus on board, as it were, but the more I use it the less I like it, sorry to say, but there are not many pascal forums about these days.

There are people working on extensions for Visual Studio Code, so they can use this....

If I may ask, I would still be interested in hearing about what you prefer in your chosen tools?
Now, I am aware, that means you might get plenty of "try this in Lazarus, it's similar or the same". I may even do that myself. Yet, I understand, that even if Lazarus had every feature you miss, you may still stay with what you have.

marcov

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2021, 01:54:37 pm »
or the devpas ide sometimes

Did somebody finally rebuild a devpas distribution with a compiler that is not almost 20 years old ?

PascalDragon

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2021, 01:57:46 pm »
I know Lazarus-IDE is not perfect, I experience some minor issues too.

What are these minor issues? Did you report them if they are indeed bugs?

Blade

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #8 on: December 13, 2021, 02:16:24 pm »
A strong contender that is the most intriguing alternative, which is also incorporated with Lazarus, is fpGUI.

It's great that it was embraced, so there is an interface for it.  I think there is more that can be done with it, possibly with mobile platforms.  I like that it's written in Object Pascal.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fpgui/

https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/fpGUI_Interface


Fred vS

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2021, 02:32:57 pm »
Hello.

You may consider ideU, it is a fork of mseide with integrated msegui and fpGUI form-designer, auto-competion code, integrated debugger, ...
With build-in macros to fully integrate fpGUI source.

Some features of ideU are inspired from Geany, like "compile the edited unit" (not only all the project), multi-compiler choice, ...
I use Lazarus 2.2.0 32/64 and FPC 3.2.2 32/64 on Debian 11 64 bit, Windows 10, Windows 7 32/64, Windows XP 32,  FreeBSD 64.
Widgetset: fpGUI, MSEgui, Win32, GTK2, Qt.

https://github.com/fredvs
https://gitlab.com/fredvs
https://codeberg.org/fredvs

Handoko

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #10 on: December 13, 2021, 03:34:30 pm »
I know Lazarus-IDE is not perfect, I experience some minor issues too.

What are these minor issues? Did you report them if they are indeed bugs?

It happened several times but I cannot 100% reproduce it, so I haven't submit any bug report. Maybe because I like doing things not normally other people do or maybe I'm just in my bad luck my computer hit by cosmic rays  :o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8)

I frequently open and run several Lazarus at the same time, two and sometimes three. I need it because I often need to copy/paste, improve, test and merge code between older and newer versions of my code. I know I can use Meld (a visual diff tool) or open the others using a text editor. But using Lazarus really has its advantages.

Weird thing happens when running several Lazarus + playing YouTube video (for music). If I switch task between opened Lazarus, sometimes the mouse pointer move randomly for 3 seconds or less. If I'm lucky, nothing bad will happen later. But sometimes, the active-task Lazarus will close immediately. Such weird case happened on me at least 3 times in this month.

Recently, I am improving my OpenGL knowledge using NeHe tutorial. Unfortunately the examples are not written in Pascal. So I have to convert them from BASIC to Pascal. Some days ago something weird happened, when I opened and run the previous code I converted, I couldn't run it from my Lazarus-IDE. Sorry, I forget what the error message was. I tried to delete the lib folder and rebuild it. Compile succeed but still the same error. I thought, maybe driver issue (because I was learning/experimenting with OpenGL), so I tested the original code using FreeBASIC-WinFBE32, which already installed on my computer. It worked perfectly, so I believed my hardware and driver were not the problem. Trying open and run other OpenGL projects, they run without any issue from my Lazarus-IDE. It seemed like that pascal project file was cursed. I didn't give up easily. I found, disabling the debugger would allow that 'cursed' project to run. I re-enabled the debugger, reset debugger, exited Lazarus. Couldn't fixed it, got the same error.

The already-run-correctly code became not able to run from Lazarus-IDE unless I disable the debugger. I was sure I had not made any changes. After several (5 times maybe) enable/disable, reset, exit/start Lazarus, the problem was gone.

Those 2 above are what I found recently. The others are too minor, I forget what they are.

Ubuntu Mate 64-bit, Lazarus 64-bit. I use only stable version of OS and Lazarus. I am a computer technician, I am sure my computer had no virus and my mouse was working good.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 04:00:38 pm by Handoko »

marcov

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #11 on: December 13, 2021, 03:40:35 pm »
(With opengl, creating the context is quite critical. Different helper libraries do this in different ways)

Handoko

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2021, 03:44:49 pm »
I make use what Lazarus offers, I use TForm and TOpenGLControl. So no need to deal with the device context, window creation, etc.

I like doing thing in challenging way. While learning OpenGL from NeHe, actually I'm doing 3 things: converting FreeBASIC code to Pascal, learning OpenGL and writing my own OpenGL module.

In my code I didn't use the drag-and-drop TOpenGLControl. The component is created using code. And I add many extra features to make the module more useful and easier for common users. Things might go wrong, as I'm still learning OpenGL. But how can we explain:

The already-working code became not working but later worked again, even I didn't change anything in the code.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 04:11:25 pm by Handoko »

Blade

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #13 on: December 13, 2021, 03:47:22 pm »
@Fred vS

I like the no installation needed fork of the Free Pascal compiler that you have.  Didn't know about your option before.

Martin_fr

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Re: Lazarus IDE alternatives
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2021, 04:59:31 pm »
I frequently open and run several Lazarus at the same time, two and sometimes three. I need it because I often need to copy/paste, improve, test and merge code between older and newer versions of my code. I know I can use Meld (a visual diff tool) or open the others using a text editor. But using Lazarus really has its advantages.

Weird thing happens when running several Lazarus + playing YouTube video (for music). If I switch task between opened Lazarus, sometimes the mouse pointer move randomly for 3 seconds or less. If I'm lucky, nothing bad will happen later. But sometimes, the active-task Lazarus will close immediately. Such weird case happened on me at least 3 times in this month.

Yes weird..., strange.

I have run up to 3 IDE (though that was on Windows):
IDE-1  debugging  IDE-2  which is debugging IDE-3.   And IDE 3 then sometimes debugging a normal project. Needs a lot of monitors.

I did note, that if any of the task that are being debugged is paused, the clipboard on Windows may get blocked. The block will timeout, but copying/pasting will hang for maybe 10 secs.
But anyway, that is debugging.

There are reports that Gtk or Linux can also act sensitive if an debugged app is paused in certain events. Again, debugging, not the case you described...

If it is multiple IDE, try menu: Tools > Options: Environment > IDE Startup: Lazurus Instances.
Just test diff settings.
Though, afaik, the IDE will always create the IPC stuff, needed to check for other Instances. Not sure if that could affect you.

Just throwing in some more ideas (completely talking through of my hat / wild guesses):
Is that just one PC? Could the mouse driver be sensitive to something caused by applications?
Like, if any app would be very slow handling a mouse related event? In case that there is any slowdown in the IDE or other open apps (such as one might get from CPU or memory exhaustion?).
Just random ideas...



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I found, disabling the debugger would allow that 'cursed' project to run. I re-enabled the debugger, reset debugger, exited Lazarus. Couldn't fixed it, got the same error.

The already-run-correctly code became not able to run from Lazarus-IDE unless I disable the debugger. I was sure I had not made any changes. After several (5 times maybe) enable/disable, reset, exit/start Lazarus, the problem was gone.
I have seen similar issues when debugging some multithreaded apps (using CEF4Delphi).
There could be timing sensitive code in the 3rd party parts. In the debugger timing is different. Inter-process communication (if not 100% properly done, and that 100% target is so easy to miss) can react to this.
I never got to really nail the cause. Well in quite some case, it was my fault: unhandled errors, in async/synchronize callbacks had left other code hanging for events never to occur....
But IIRC, there were some unexplained cases. And, also some of the errors did not cause the same lock-down outside the debugger, why ever that might have been.

Out of interest, which debugger were you using? Gdb or FpDebug or tested with both?

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I need it because I often need to copy/paste, improve, test and merge code between older and newer versions of my code.

Just a note, if you haven't found it, the package "LazProjectGroups" may help, switching quickly between projects.

You can also see files listed from each of the projects, and open those sources while keeping your current project.
That way you could have sources from diff versions open within one project. Using several source editors, you can then compare them.
Not sure if it suits your needs, but I thought it was worth a mention.

 

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