Rolling releases Lazarus[stable or main]+FPC[main]

[ALLIGATOR]

Do you know anyone who makes such releases?

I know about FPCUpDeluxe. But there are people who are far removed from all this. And it would be easiest for them to start with a ready-made distribution

Why FPC[main] specifically? Because it has many useful features, fixes, and improvements

[cdbc]

Hi
Yes, PCLinuxOS has FPC release/stable 3.2.2 & Lazarus release/stable 4.4 in its software-repo, only a couple of clicks away from your desktop / laptop 
All of it 64-bit, 'cause we don't have 32-bit OS anymore.
You should be most welcome aboard 
(Please don't try to install it on your oldest machine, as that can be troublesome, to say the least) 
Ps.: I run the repo-versions + FPC-main & Laz-main from FpcUpDeluxe...
HTH
Regards Benny

[PascalDragon]

I know about FPCUpDeluxe. But there are people who are far removed from all this. And it would be easiest for them to start with a ready-made distribution

FPCUpDeluxe is the easiest way and the only one we recommend for people that want that aside from simply downloading the source and building it yourself.

[Martin_fr]

Why FPC[main] specifically? Because it has many useful features, fixes, and improvements

While not an answer to your question: If you plan on using main, I would advice to only to so, if you have lots of automated test for your code.

FPC main will most of the time to appear to work well... But it may have bugs, and those may not always be noticeable in a few manual test runs.

I don't have numbers, or stats on likelihood. Maybe I was just very unlucky. But I had (in the past couple of month) several issue, where I had version of FPC main.
They were good enough to run the IDE without noticeable issues (that is the bits I used in that time frame, which is a small part only).
But the failed (with several compiler bugs) some of the code I was working on. And I was only able to notice because I had massive testcases, that I could run for lots of build settings. 
Without those testcases, those compiler bugs would now crash the IDE when build with 3.3.1.

Given that I encountered 2 or 3 (or was it 4) bug in just 2 or 3 month... I am either an extremely unlucky person, or  bugs in FPC main are common enough to affect anyone (if they use a wide enough code base for a long enough time).

Yeah, ok, I did squeeze it, using new-ish stuff like generics, and really using those, and tweaking for optimization... But then, using new (less tested) features would be the point of going for 3.3.1. I actually only used what even 3.2.2 has, I did 3.3.1 only for testing the results.


And if your app fails, its a long way from debugging in search for an issue in your code, to realizing that it isn't your code at all.

[PascalDragon]

Given that I encountered 2 or 3 (or was it 4) bug in just 2 or 3 month... I am either an extremely unlucky person, or  bugs in FPC main are common enough to affect anyone (if they use a wide enough code base for a long enough time).

Yeah, ok, I did squeeze it, using new-ish stuff like generics, and really using those, and tweaking for optimization... But then, using new (less tested) features would be the point of going for 3.3.1. I actually only used what even 3.2.2 has, I did 3.3.1 only for testing the results.

I hope you reported the bugs?

[Martin_fr]

Yes, of course.

Going through my recent reports, the following are code-generator issues
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41466 fixed in the meantime
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41431 open
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41422 open
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41353 open

The 2nd one (inline) turned out to already had a prior report (and for quite some time already). But by the time I found enough info to report it, I did then forget to check.

And I must say, for something that fundamental (IMHO) as inlining, I was surprised to find that its been known for so long.
That said, I know it happens... I have bugs on my list, that ought to have been fixed very long ago, and yet haven't been.

[ALLIGATOR]

I think I've found something to base a weekly (monthly, etc.) rolling release of Lazarus [main] + FPC [main] on


https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-fpc

+

https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-lazarus

and possibly + this

https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus/-/tree/main/tools/install

[marcov]

Shell script snapshot build tools, of which there are many.  All devels used them, in shell or batch form. The more end user ready form is fpcupdeluxe.   

But ability to make snapshots is not the same as a rolling release, though one could maybe consider snapshots of the fixes branch as such.

[ALLIGATOR]

But ability to make snapshots is not the same as a rolling release

My idea is an automatic weekly build, without human involvement

Like releases on SourceForge, but based on fresh source code

[Thaddy]

Well, that is what actually happens behind the scenes: trunk gets rebuild every day automatically. Part of the tests cycle. That also means it FAILS sometimes (quite often) and the test builds can never be released.
I do not know if the tests are for every platform.(I suppose not)

Maybe we can use a timestamp on any successful build...then again it simply carries risks.
Then again: that gets usually fixed in hours, days, not weeks.
I mean building the lot, not anything else.

[marcov]

But ability to make snapshots is not the same as a rolling release

My idea is an automatic weekly build, without human involvement

Like releases on SourceForge, but based on fresh source code

As Thaddy says, for FPC those are available:  http://downloads.freepascal.org/fpc/snapshot/

Lazarus had something too, but seems not to be updated since two months ago:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus-snapshots/

[Thaddy]

I forgot to add the snapshot indeed: the snapshots are successful builds.
This process is automated, but monitored.
(hence you see quite often: regenerated make files after commit XXX, which is human intervention)

Tnx Marcov to correct my omission.

There are two snapshots: fixes and main.

If you have a branch locally, it is also recommended to learn to regenerate the make files.
This is not necessary for people that never touch compiler or rtl sources.
I guess that is most of the users.

Any snapshot is a succesful build, but does not guarantee that everything works, but usually it does at least for the main platforms.

I prefer to build from source from the repository directly, but the snapshot is a good point to start (it also needs building, though: no binaries).
If you want the latest and greatest features, use the main snapshot, not the fixes.
As Marcov wrote, the fixes snapshot can be considered a rolling release in all but name, but many of the new features in main can not - even technically - be backported to fixes and these are often the most interesting.

Almost all of https://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_New_Features_Trunk will never be in current fixes.

[dsiders]

Lazarus had something too, but seems not to be updated since two months ago:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus-snapshots/

That's for a release candidate. It stopped getting updates when the release happened. When 4.6 or 5.0 becomes a pending thing... it'll probably get snapshots too.

[Martin_fr]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus-snapshots/

Actually, its snapshot in general, but not automated. Therefore mostly in combination with RC, or other special events.

Those are manually build installers. The reason for the latest one was the combination of a Lazarus RC/Release and the availability of an FPC RC. Mainly the latter, if there hadn't been an FPC RC, then they wouldn't have been build.

The last automatic Lazarus snapshot must be ages ago (still in the era of SVN). Those were eventually stopped as no one wanted to do the work to constantly fix the build scripts and restart the build environment.

GITLAB CI could nowadays be used as environment. But it still needs maintenance work, and it offers zero advantage over FpcUpDeluxe. In fact - unless you want a snapshot once a year (and then why a snapshot and not a release), if you regularly update, then FpcUpDeluxe is much better. It only needs to pull the differences from git.

Oh well, I havent checked what initial config you do or do not get with FpcUpDeluxe, or if it has the exact same set of initial packages installed. But once you have the snapshot, and keep updating it, then you have your own conf/packagelist and there is again no diff.

And if you don't want a 3rd party tool, but would accept a git client (technically 3rd party), then (at least for Lazarus / not FPC) just pull the repo yourself. Copy a Lazarus executable from a working install and rebuild, and you are on the latest too.
That is a bit more intrigued for fpc though.

As for FPC, prebuild snapshots come with a pre-compiled RTL => fixed optimization and debug settings. FpcUpDeluxe allows you to chose.

[marcov]

My point was more about there being a difference between a snapshot (a build at a random point, even if that only is "to compile") and a rolling release ( deliberate stable points on a branch).

Both processes churning out binaries or a regular basis doesn't make them the same.