Lazarus on Asus Eee

[tech-pro]

I have just ordered an Asus Eee which as some of you may know is a compact laptop with a solid state RAM drive that runs Linux.

I would like to be able to run my own applications on this, created using Lazarus. However, it only has 2GB of storage and I'm not sure I'd be able to install all the source files etc. in order to build it from scratch.

Has anyone built a binary distribution of Lazarus and FP that could simply be copied on to the Asus Eee and then used to compile applications?

[Marc]

2GB should be enough I think. Sources anret that big and you need the binaries anyway.

[piper62]

That's interesting. I'm going for one too.
I guess it should be possible to run at least applications on the machine. The IDE should be possible too.
I saw a XUbuntu running on it and then you have access to the packages. I never worked with Xandros...
It's a x86 system, should be also no problem with other components.

I'll try to grap one today here in Edmonton and I'll keep you informed.
Which one did you order?

Regards,
Tibor

[piper62]

Hi,
a short update.
I got my eeePC 701 (4GB SSD, 512 MB RAM, Ver. 7C.
I updated it to BIOS 703 and switched the "EasyMode" off.
It's an amazing machine for that money!

Now to the question regarding FPC/Lazarus applications on it.
In another forum I read that a guy got errors running FPC programs.
I installed:
-libglib1.2
-libgtk1.2 (which takes also libgtk1.2-common)
and libgdk-pixbuf2
For the last one I included the standard "deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main" into the sources.lst.
The other packages got from the eeepc forum repository.
I installed all of the things via aptitude because I got some errors with synaptic.

Then it was no problem to run an application which I wrote with lazarus.
No errors, no problems.

Next thing will be the installation of the development environment.

Regards,
Tibor

[tech-pro]

I got the 2GB "Surf" version. I have installed a 2GB SD card for extra storage.

Unfortunately I don't have another Linux system so I can't try running anything until I have the development system up and running.

I don't know whether the Linux i386 DEB package from here would work or not. Having already spent some time installing and configuring software I don't want to risk hosing the system. One thing I don't currently have is a backup system that will make easily restorable images.

[tech-pro]

I managed to install all the libraries you mentioned using Synaptic, without errors. I'm not sure what to do next, though.

[piper62]

Hi Julian,

I'm sorry, I don't have the time at the moment to "play" with my device. I would like to do it but I have to work on my publication...
But of course I do the work on the eeePC and I can just take it with me to Starbucks or wherever... :-)

But anyway, I normally use Debian as OS and there my approach is to download the complete .deb packages from this site here and the to unzip all the content (fp*.deb packages) into a separate directory.
Then (of course as root) to "dpkg -i fp*" in the directory. On Kubuntu I had to recall some package installations with dpkg -i fp<specific_package>.deb again and then it worked on Kubuntu 7.10 with the FPC/Lazarus Versions (FPC 2.2 and Lazarus 0.9.24).
Once you installed the FPC, I recommend to create a "lazarus" directory in your home space. That can be on your USB disk.
Unpack the lazarus system there and perform a "make clean".
After that lazarus should start.
Do everything from the terminal because there you get the error messages which can help to solve problems.
My approach on the eeepc would be the same. Probably we'll get some problems with some packages but at all I believe they will be solvable.

I hope that I get the time to try it this week.

Normally you don't have to be afraid to destroy your system.
dpkg doesn't resolve dependencies on its own and you'll get messages regarding the package you try to install.
And that's different to MS-Win: Please read these messages carefully, they are normally VERY useful!
If you get something where you're afraid that something bad happens, just don't install it.
You can easily remove packages with dpkg also. For more information look for tha manpages "man dpkg" or on the web.

Hope that helps.

Tibor

[tech-pro]

I don't know a lot when it comes to Linux. I wish you could just download a binary package and install it like you can in Windows. If there was a Lazarus .deb package I could access using Synaptic then it would tell me what all the dependencies are.

The other problem is that although my 2G Surf is supposed to have a 2GB drive, sda1 is only about 511MB and I have only 179MB free. I don't know how big a Lazarus / Free Pascal installation is on Linux but my Lazarus tree occupies 420MB under Windows. I don't know how to force packages to install on a different drive, or how to seamlessly add my SD card to extend the existing filesystem.

I think the best solution for me might be to install a compatible Linux distribution in QEMU on my Windows laptop, and install Lazarus on that and do the development there. I don't really want to develop in a 800 x 480 window, I just want to be able to run programs I've written. I can just copy the binaries I make over to the Eee once they are working.

[piper62]

With your approach it should be easy. As I described the programs are running on the eeePC. That's for sure.
I checked shortly the installation of FPC on the Kubuntu system here:
That's what dpkg (and this is the program which is called by synaptic in the end) is doing with the .deb packages.

/usr/share/doc/      - here are several directories with: ca. 1.5 MB
/usr/bin/                - fpc executables:                         ca.  15 MB
/usr/lib/fpc/            - fpc libraries and classes                     98 MB
/usr/share/fpcsrc/   - fpc source                                       105 MB

at all: ca. 220 MB

Your Lazarus installation can reside on a user space on a usb drive or something like that.
It should be also possible to configure the fpc system that you put it to a different place but this needs deeper linux/fpc/lazarus knowledge.

If you learn a bit more about the linx package system, you'll see that this is VERY convenient to use and really safe.
VERY different to MS-Win!!! And it's possible to clean a system from a program completely...

Anyway, I guess to have the Lazarus IDE on the eeePC makes only sense when you are working with an external monitor.
800x480 is just to small to make development.
So, your approach to develop on a bigger machine and then to transport the program to eeePC is the more intelligent way, I guess.
And I'll use it most times this way.
But I'll try to make the IDE running and I'll post my experiences here.
With the installation of the libraries you should be set to run applications which you wrote with lazarus.
If you have any problems, just ask.

Regards,
Tibor

[tech-pro]

Which distro did you use to compile the binaries that worked fine on the Eee?

[piper62]

As I wrote before I normally use Debian. And the testapplication was build on a Debian 4.0 system.
But it shouldn't matter which distro you use. It's only important that you build a x86_32 bit application.

The rest should be ok then.

Tibor

[tech-pro]

Thanks. I was confused by the reference to Kubuntu. But I thought it mattered which libraries were installed on the system. That (I believed) was the reason why people either compile applications from source or download them from repositories built specifically for their distribution. Do I misunderstand (quite possible) or are Lazarus apps not dependent on these libraries to the extent that C apps are?

[Marc]

Lazarus apps depend on external libs, but are not depending on a specific version build for some distro.

[piper62]

I never had a problem with slightly different external library versions on different distros.
Normally it just works!

Regards,
Tibor

[ssamayoa]

I installed:
-libglib1.2
-libgtk1.2 (which takes also libgtk1.2-common)
and libgdk-pixbuf2

Then to run binaries on asus eee LCL must be compiled with GTK1, isnt?

This leads me to another question:
It is possible to static link GTK 2 intro applications?

Regards.