Forum > Operating Systems
Lazarus for RISC OS
StefanRISCOS:
Hello I want to revive a topic about implementing Lazarus for RISC OS from Gerald Holdsworth:
Are there any programmers in this community that would like to join in a project to release Lazarus for the ARM based OS : RISC OS?
RISC OS was the first OS implemented on the now famous ARM processors. RISC OS is open source now.
GCC 10.4 is available on RISC OS. It runs on any Raspberry Pi and it is also available as free emulator for Windows and Linux/MacOS (RPCemu). There is not really any program IDE available for RISC OS other than one for BBCBASIC (AppBASIC).
So currently Lazarus would be for sure the most popular IDE on RISC OS.
We made a poll about Lazarus and 74% of RISC OS users who took part in the poll are interested in Lazarus.
https://twitter.com/RISCOSproject/status/1662538079104532481
So we would mainly need som people who are familiar with the Lazarus code and implenting the Pascal compiler. We can find some people who will assist with the RISC OS part.
For anyone interested in helping us I would offer our RISC OS Cloverleaf distro for free with a collection of most free applications available and also our modern filer "CLFiler".
Please read the previously posted topic by Gerald in 2021:
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,52467
regards Stefan
PascalDragon:
--- Quote from: StefanRISCOS on June 06, 2023, 04:02:17 pm ---Hello I want to revive a topic about implementing Lazarus for RISC OS from Gerald Holdsworth:
Are there any programmers in this community that would like to join in a project to release Lazarus for the ARM based OS : RISC OS?
--- End quote ---
You first need to port FPC itself before you can even remotely think about porting Lazarus. For a slightly outdated example of porting FPC, please look here.
Once you've ported FPC you then need to check whether you can use an existing widgetset like GTK or Qt or whether you need to implement a completely new widgetset for RISC OS. In the later case you might want to first start with a cross compiler as quite a lot of the widgetset needs to work correctly before the IDE will work.
TRon:
@StefanRISCOS:
Just a note.
When I treat myself as being totally oblivious to RiscOS, I surf over to https://www.riscosopen.org and start digging for the obvious when trying to port something. That usually entails finding a toolchain that I can use (usually for a existing c-compiler).
Then I find out that RisOS itself is using it's own custom build utility (not familiar with it, no intention to either as it has no relevance for porting, let alone cross-compiling) that it uses a closed source c-compiler and that the source-code (I also assume headers) is not compatible with gnu-c. see also: https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Cross-building%20RISC%20OS
Perhaps I am looking at the wrong locations but the things I was able to find isn't very encouraging, do you agree ?
StefanRISCOS:
@PascalDragon
thanks for the link to the FPC porting. There are some ARM related ports already so we might not start at zero level there.
system_arm_embedded
system_arm_symbian
But currently we cannot use aarch64 yet as RISC OS is still stuck to 32bit so aarch32.
Parts of new RISC OS implementations has been adopted from Open BSD.
I just found the reference of @Iproven about the Ultibo FPC for Raspberry
https://ultibo.org/wiki/Building_for_Raspbian
I think that might be the closest fit for an FPC on RISC OS.
@TRon
I think that the Lazarus UI looks quiet similar to RISC OS style. The only thing that is different that there is no top menu.
There is a library called Toolbox that handels all window related stuff (gadgets?!)
http://www.riscos.com/support/developers/toolbox/reseditor.html
Is the Lazarus UI written based on Pascal or C?
StefanRISCOS:
@TRon
There is also GCC 10.4 available. There is the Shared C library and the Toolbox library to access all windows elements.
To edit window content there is a tool that is very much similar to Lazarus editor (when you scroll down the page you will see the screenshots).
http://www.riscos.com/support/developers/toolbox/reseditor.html
I think the RISC OS windows design is very much like Delphi style. More than MS Windows or MacOS.
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