DSO / DLL creation in FPC / lazarus and firebird components

[slukacs]

hello all,

i am brand new to FPC and lazarus.  i programmed in delphi since v1 and kylix since v1.  i am even a TCB for borland.  i love delphi/kylix but since d6, borland seems only after microslopht money and .NET.  the IDE has been buggy and form inheritance corrupts forms and code.  borland went to k3 and then essentially dropped it.  i am a bit tired on waiting to borland.

so i found FPC and lazarus the other day and i have a renewed by cautious hope.  so i plan on easing my way gently into it.

so i looked into new projects in lazarus and i did not see how to create a linux dso or so.  that would also be analogous to a dll in windows.  this may be a FPC question, but can this be done in lazarus or FPC.

also, i use firebird sql relational database.  it is so great and i love it, especially since it is the original developers and borland open sourced their interbase.  are their FPC or lazarus nonvisual components for hooking into firebird?  usually the main component would be a descendent of TDatabase.  or TClientDataset.

oh yeah, is there a TClientDataset analog in FPC lazarus?

thanx for helping a novice.

lucas :?:  :?:  :?:

[Lightning]

Yes dll/so whatever you can compile the same syntax with Delphi/Kylix and FPC.
For FireBird you have Interbase components and UIB, search the web, we are still waiting for full variant support then porting Zeos is planned.
Lazarus is slowly replacing Delphi for some reason, i think it's the Open spirit Borland had in it's early Delphi versions.

[slukacs]

are variants slated in a near release of FPC?

lucas

[Lightning]

They are supported just not fully working, you should be able to use them for simple things, but i will have to test the 1.9.6 release soon to check if they have been fixed yet

[Marc]

Latest news is/was that variants wont be completed before fpc 2.0
I cant remember which parts will be missing, but I guess IDispatch and maybe arrays)