FreeSparta - "commercial" plugins and new Lazarus distro.

[mangakissa]

Yesterday I downloaded Free Sparta on my laptop Vista 32bit with 2GB of memory.
The installation was taken 20 minutes of my time (but could be a problem on my laptop, because Lazarus has the same problem). After installation, a build was done for several source files. Why? I don't know. After this build the setup tries to 7 steps to build/compile several things with 64bits settings. Why is the setup doing it? I have 32bits and can't anything with 64bits.
After the installation completed, I tried to startup freeSparta with the created shortcut icon. But Windows tells me the application can not be started, because it's not an executable or file is corrupted.

One thing is nice to say. freeSparta uses FPC 2.7.1. Why Lazarus still comes with 2.6.2 I don't know. Many people are downloading and installing FPC 2.7.1 for using it in Lazarus (excluded me ).

[BigChimp]

After this build the setup tries to 7 steps to build/compile several things with 64bits settings. Why is the setup doing it? I have 32bits and can't anything with 64bits.

Well, if the purpose is to install a cross compiler for 64 bit: your 32 bit laptop can certainly do that. Running 64 bit application: of course, no.

One thing is nice to say. freeSparta uses FPC 2.7.1. Why Lazarus still comes with 2.6.2 I don't know. Many people are downloading and installing FPC 2.7.1 for using it in Lazarus (excluded me ).

Lazarus comes with FPC 2.6.4, not 2.6.2.
While 2.7.1 works fine most of the time, it's a development build and can (and occassionally does) break unexpectedly. There are no gaurantees. The stable release is carefully tested and fixes are backported. That's not the case for trunk.
I understand why Lazarus chooses to work with the stable FPC version.

[Leledumbo]

One thing is nice to say. freeSparta uses FPC 2.7.1. Why Lazarus still comes with 2.6.2 I don't know. Many people are downloading and installing FPC 2.7.1 for using it in Lazarus (excluded me ).

Lazarus comes with FPC 2.6.4, not 2.6.2.
While 2.7.1 works fine most of the time, it's a development build and can (and occassionally does) break unexpectedly. There are no gaurantees. The stable release is carefully tested and fixes are backported. That's not the case for trunk.
I understand why Lazarus chooses to work with the stable FPC version.

As an addition, trunk users are usually bug hunters and feature testers. If you don't want to be any of them, better stick to latest release or at least fixes branch (2.6.<some odd number>) because getting a broken revision is not a problem for us and we can get back to a working state easily.

[mangakissa]

@BigChimp

I'm sorry. Type mismatch.

Then the builder of freeSparta takes a lot of risk to use FPC 2.7.1 (odd number).

[BigChimp]

Then the builder of freeSparta takes a lot of risk to use FPC 2.7.1 (odd number).

Who knows. Perhaps has tested it well and will provide fixes himself for issues that appear during product lifetime.

[marcov]

Afaik he took Code Typhon as basis, and they use trunk too. IIRC because of newer ARM support.

Anyway, the instability of 2.7.1 shouldn't be exaggerated, but status changes daily, and there will be small breakages. (and if you say e.g. "I have 2.7.1 of late june", nobody can give you a list of problems in that version)

[hnb]

After the installation completed, I tried to startup freeSparta with the created shortcut icon. But Windows tells me the application can not be started, because it's not an executable or file is corrupted.

Thank you for reporting. I'll try to get this fixed as soon as possible.

Try run (InstallationDir)\sparta\bin32\sparta.exe

Regards