"contains spaces"

[99Percent]

I am new to Lazarus, coming from several years developing in Delphi.

I can see there are issues with directories with spaces in Lazarus, but I am not sure exactly which and how. To begin with the default installation directory is the non windows standard C:\lazarus vs C:\Program Files\lazarus.

Then I am having a very hard time configuring directories in the project>compile options. Every time I insert a full path containing spaces, the IDE complains with a warning eg "Other Unit Files (-Fu) (Delimiter is semicolon): contains spaces." even after I correct this, by using relative paths for example, the IDE still complains. Is this a bug?

I understand that there must be a philosophy of compatibility for ease in  crossplatform compiling and that is why there could be an issue with directories with spaces, but please someone explain some guidelines I must follow to avoid pitfalls with directories. Must I put all my projects in directories with no spaces (for example nothing in My Documents). What about 3rd party components, where should I place the source files?

[marcov]

Avoiding dirs with spaces is indeed the best.

Note that most of the problems come from the used mingw tools, not from FPC and Lazarus itself.

In the trunk version several of these problems have been fixed or worked around, but if I had to do serious work, I still would not use dirs with spaces.

It is a small price to pay to avoid running in to remaining bugs in this department