New Get Lazarus Initiative

[sysrpl]

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative to promote Free Pascal and Lazarus. The hub of this initiative is http://www.getlazarus.org

The get Lazarus initiative aims to an reintroduce Lazarus to the software development world. To aide in this endeavor we've created our own special Lazarus bundles for Windows, Mac, and Linux with test versions of Free Pascal 3.0 Lazarus 1.4. We believe these bundles are the easiest Lazarus environments to install ever, and they won't interfere with your existing Free Pascal and Lazarus environments. We've also built-in support for full cross compile between platforms by default.

Our initiative hub http://www.getlazarus.org is built on a new custom wiki engine which allows for creation of some highly interactive wiki pages. The showcase page http://www.getlazarus.org/community/showcase is a good example of this.

We also have a new Lazarus forum http://www.getlazarus.org/forums themed to match the initiative. We're going to be looking for forum moderators and official wiki administrators soon. See this forum topic for consideration http://www.getlazarus.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3

And finally we are forming a professional Free Pascal and Lazarus consultant network for select few community members. Members will be invited to participate in commercial software projects as requests are filtered through our site.

Thank you to everyone for your attention and thank you for helping to promote Free Pascal and Lazarus! It's a great time to be a Lazarus fan!

[jwdietrich]

It is a good thing that you started this initiative. I wonder, however, if it is a good idea to establish a second wiki and a second forum that compete with the official ones. I don't see a benefit in this decision.

[airpas]

nice splash screen.
btw , installing components is really faster now ! , faster than laz 1.2.6

[Ñuño_Martínez]

Good job.  I'll spread The Word to the World... sort of...   

[sysrpl]

It is a good thing that you started this initiative. I wonder, however, if it is a good idea to establish a second wiki and a second forum that compete with the official ones. I don't see a benefit in this decision.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't intend to create a competing wiki, I just wanted to write a website. As it happens, a templated system where I could edit each page on the fly while I started formulating things to say was the approach on which I settled. I already had a rock solid custom web framework of my own, and extending my page class into an page editor class took around 200 lines of backend code, and a few lines of the front end in javascript. I just ended up with a custom from scratch wiki engine which does what it needs, and that is making and editing lots of pages quick (which is what wiki means).

If it helps, I link to the official Lazarus wiki in many See also sections at the ends of pages and will continue to do so as the initiative grows. I hope this clears up the rational in your and others minds.

[jwdietrich]

It is a good thing that you started this initiative. I wonder, however, if it is a good idea to establish a second wiki and a second forum that compete with the official ones. I don't see a benefit in this decision.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't intend to create a competing wiki, I just wanted to write a website. As it happens, a templated system where I could edit each page on the fly while I started formulating things to say was the approach on which I settled. I already had a rock solid custom web framework of my own, and extending my page class into an page editor class took around 200 lines of backend code, and a few lines of the front end in javascript. I just ended up with a custom from scratch wiki engine which does what it needs, and that is making and editing lots of pages quick (which is what wiki means).

If it helps, I link to the official Lazarus wiki in many See also sections at the ends of pages and will continue to do so as the initiative grows. I hope this clears up the rational in your and others minds.

Well, it is nice that your web backend is flexible enough to support this kind of functionality. However, I still don't understand why we need a second forum. In my opinion the drawbacks outweigh its benefit. But, of course, it is your right to do what you like to do.

[airpas]

in mushroom game designer picture i see that you use non standard ttoolbar and tpagecontrol , is it your own component ?

[sysrpl]

in mushroom game designer picture i see that you use non standard ttoolbar and tpagecontrol , is it your own component ?

Both are non standard. I wrote my own pretty massive control library years ago for Delphi, re-adapted it for Lazarus. I never re-released that packages, and instead but started a new library for Lazarus a couple of years back. This new Library is called Codebot Cross and is built on a whole cross platform new graphics system. You can view that system here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5MPv_GOzRk

Last year I added OSX Quartz support to that Library.

I also am the developer of Bare Game:

http://www.baregame.org/

In the end though, it's really all to much for me (one person) to handle between my normal real life responsibilities, work, and my side projects (I'm no spring chicken).  My hope in creating the get Lazarus initiative was to re-invigorate the Lazarus community, find some people in the community to mentor, and hand off these projects for them to maintain, rather than let everything I've privately worked on in the past fade away benefiting no one.

[airpas]

you've done an amazing work ,  really great projects , but yes , its hard to balance between real life responsibilities and a hobby like programming .
btw , i download Codebot from github , why don't you add some demos projects  so we can see how this lib work ?

thanks
 

[sysrpl]

you've done an amazing work ,  really great projects , but yes , its hard to balance between real life responsibilities and a hobby like programming .
btw , i download Codebot from github , why don't you add some demos projects  so we can see how this lib work ?

thanks
 

The plan is for me to finish a few things on the backend of the getlazarus.org initiative, then release a new version of Bare Game which has a ton of really great improvements. After that I will go back to the Codebot.Cross library and integrate my new OSX additions as well as make some demos like you mentioned. Along the way I'll need some help in the form of forum moderators and website admin level wiki editors. I'll also need some testers of Bare Game and Codebot.Cross before they're re-released. Maybe I can even get some help writing demos (I wrote a top down car race dynamic zooming with a HUD Bare Game demo someone could take over).

If anyone wants to contribute, go to my site, create an account, and send admin (me) a PM. I'll be considering positions for forum moderators and website admin level wiki editors over the next week or possibly longer.

[Gizmo]

I think your website looks great. I really like the showcase section and indeed the splash screen. Looks really good.

But (sorry, there's always a but) I agree with jwdietrich. I'm not sure it's a good idea to create a parralel community site, especially for new users who might be unsure which community site to use...this one, or yours. Some new users might even mistake your site for the official one. When I first read your thread title, I assumed it was some kind of merchandise\spread the word style site, perhaps selling mugs and t-shirts. Not, in essence, a mirror of lazarus.freepascal.org.

[Martin_fr]

Great start.

Unfortunately I was not able to find any link back to this site? Or at least the original Lazarus homepage at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

For all else I agree with many of the points that has been said:

1) split forums/wiki?  This will not help the popularity. It leads to 2 sites with half the traffic each, and therefore each seeming like a rather small community.

2) test version of FPC 3.0 / Lazarus 1.4
   Neither exist!
There is not, there never was, and there never will be a test version of FPC 3.0 / Lazarus 1.4

There is or will be
 release candidates (or test versions) for the upcoming 3.0/1.4
 None of them is labelled 3.0/1.4 standalone.

You should also clarify if/where your download differs from the original (since you use at least a diff installer).

[stocki]

Put your energy into FPC and Lazarus and not into senseless colored ad sites without any use.

[sysrpl]

I think your website looks great. I really like the showcase section and indeed the splash screen. Looks really good.

But (sorry, there's always a but) I agree with jwdietrich. I'm not sure it's a good idea to create a parralel community site, especially for new users who might be unsure which community site to use...this one, or yours. Some new users might even mistake your site for the official one. When I first read your thread title, I assumed it was some kind of merchandise\spread the word style site, perhaps selling mugs and t-shirts. Not, in essence, a mirror of lazarus.freepascal.org.

Points taken. And yes, I am not selling mugs, we agree. The reason for my site was initially I had created the easiest to use installers for the forthcoming Free Pascal 3.0, built from the new fixes 3.0 branch in svn. Then I made  some modifications which I hope you can see are good:

1. Free Pascal Compiler and Lazarus are installed off your $HOME folder and don't require sudo to installed
2. FPC configuration is no longer dumped in $HOME/.fpc.cfg, rather it's placed in $HOME/YourFolder/fpc/bin
3. Lazarus no longer write configurations to $HOME/.lazarus

These three changes actually allow users to run multiple versions of FPC and Lazarus without any interference, so all users can start testing the fixes 3.0 branch right now rather than waiting eight month or whenever the first official FPC 3.0 versions start rolling out on the main Free Pascal site.

Additionally, my Mac installer is the first one in existence to install and configure everything for you while it installs. This include installing XCode and the debugger, which as of Mavericks last year didn't ship with XCode.

Then I thought of adding all cross compilers plus cross compile libs for each platform and CPU architecture into the installers, and I got them working and included.

Then I decided to make some user interface mods on all platforms, including single window mode by default, reduced tool window sizes, and a default tool window layout I thought made sense.

All of my changes and scripts were communicated through the official Free Pascal mailing lists. But since I wanted Free Pascal 3.0, my easier than ever universal installers, and the side projects which have require using 2.7.1 branch (qhich would never see an official release) to be available now, I decided to create the getlazarus.org initiative. So now everyone can get a hold on all the new stuff I just discussed, and get it now.

I'm sorry if anyone feels getlazarus.org may split the community, but I've already seen thousands of page hits and installs from the reddit and hacker news community. These are new to Lazarus users, and I believe Lazarus acquiring new users isn't bad just because they read about it and got their initial taste from a site not ending in freepascal.org. Final Note: The Lazarus IDE and Compiler still tell people to go to freepascal.org, and my site isn't linked or added into any of the software which comes from freepascal.org (yes my installers which i wrote, no in fpc or lazarus which I help to install).

[Martin_fr]

The reason for my site was initially I had created the easiest to use installers for the forthcoming Free Pascal 3.0, built from the new fixes 3.0 branch in svn.

Which is great.
The absence of the daily snapshots was regretted by many. So having a source of SVN build is good.

3. Lazarus no longer write configurations to $HOME/.lazarus

You do know that you can start lazarus using any config folder you like?

lazarus[.exe] --primary-config-path=....

* on linux just create a shell script to include the param
* on windows create a lazarus.cfg file in the exe dir and put the param in there. (same as the official installer does, if checkbox is ticked)

I'm sorry if anyone feels getlazarus.org may split the community, but I've already seen thousands of page hits and installs from the reddit and hacker news community.

Your site is not splitting the community. Even a 2nd wiki is ok. But forums (and mailnglist) are different. If there are many, then those seeking help must post on all of them for the best chance of reply.
I have seen this already between just forum and mailnglist.There are people who only read one. And sometimes a question best answered by such a person, is asked on the other medium. Never seen by the person who might have known.

So adding another forum is something I am not sure it will add benefit. Unless there are topics that for some reason can not be discussed here? Or are better discussed there ?  (e.g the differences you add to your releases)