The Future of FPC

[ALLIGATOR]

Sometimes I see discussions in chat rooms/forums and other places raising the question of the future of FPC from a long-term planning perspective. For example, someone may want to switch to it, but they have questions:

“How many developers are there in the FPC team?”
“What will happen if they leave the project?”

People are concerned that even if everything is fine now, what will happen in 10 years? Will their development become obsolete because it will no longer be possible to compile and support development for new operating systems and platforms?

At this point, I always think deeply and want to write something, but I cannot find the words to defend it.

What do you think?

I hope that there are large and medium-sized businesses that are already heavily invested in FPC and, if necessary, will be able to support its development with human and financial resources (which is not happening now, at least not openly, because everyone is happy with the way things are)

[gidesa]

“How many developers are there in the FPC team?”

I see in Gitlab that there are 18 members in FPC group, and 24 members in Lazarus group (different from FPC members). All seems active in 2026, more or less.

[440bx]

...everyone is happy with the way things are)

I don't know about that. 

I think that just the long delay between v3.2.2 and the upcoming v3.2.4 has already made a "dent" in user happiness.    It has in mine.

Manpower is often cited as the main reason for FPC's slow progress and, I believe it is a reason, however, I am not convinced it is the main reason.

My perception is that there is no "direction" in this project.  You want to know where C and/or C++ are going ?... easy, look at the current standard for those languages and the features being discussed for the next standard.    What that really means is: there is a group of language design experts investing brainpower in analyzing the language and determining what fixes and improvements are needed.  There is no such thing taking place for Pascal and, THAT IMO, will end up being Pascal's demise.   The closest we've got to something like that, which is a very far cry from a standards body, is whatever Embarcadero/Idera comes up with and, (a) that doesn't carry much weight in the development of FPC and (b) doesn't carry much weight in the industry either.  However, to their credit, their copying C features isn't such a bad idea but, I believe they could do better than that.

I believe the real problem in this project is lack of _direction_, this results in the absence of a clearly stated list of goals to be accomplished from one release to the next along with a reasonable time frame for those goals to be reached. 

It probably doesn't help that companies that might support further development of FPC aren't given much incentive to do so.  For instance, if a company offers a reasonable bounty for some feature to become real, there should be a reasonable and visible way of crediting that company for their contribution.  Usually businesses want something for their money and that's completely reasonable.  They can't stay in business if they don't somehow manage to get something in return for their financial investment.

I do believe manpower is a problem but, I seriously doubt it is the biggest and most significant problem this project faces.

One thought that occasionally crosses my mind is: where did the GPC developers go ?... we could certainly use their talents and love of Pascal.  Are they participating in this project and if the answer is no, is there some way we could interest them in being part of FPC's development ?

There is plenty of truth to "A problem well stated is a problem half-solved" that leads to a famous physicist's problem solving MO who stated that he'd spend 55 minutes defining a problem and 5 minutes solving it.  It's surprising how much time and effort a good definition can accomplish.

That will be $0.05... thank you!

[n7800]

Having a development team is crucial, but since it's FOSS, the number of contributors is also important. In both projects (Lazarus and FPC), I see quite a few contributors, including regulars, who make significant (and qualified) contributions. The reports on the bug tracker are also heavily populated by newcomers, which is also a good indicator.

I don't spend much time working on FPC, but Lazarus has fewer active developers than GitLab lists. Some are relatively inactive (either recently or at all), some primarily maintain a specific part of the project (e.g. some packages or a set of widgets, documentation), and some barely contribute code (maintaining the website/forum/wiki). There's also an unused account left over from the Mantis migration, and some bots from GitLab itself.

But in any case, whatever the current team is doesn't mean anything. The both projects are about 30 years old, and I'm sure there have been many developers and changes during that time. Apparently, new team members were found somehow ))

[Joanna]

I can say that there is a lot less support available now than when I first started using Lazarus around 2014. Things can change a lot in unexpected ways..

[Lulu]

Hi all,
nothing lasts forever in this world.
No matter what happens tomorrow, I am grateful for all the efforts made by the teams. I hope this project will continue for a long time to come.

[marcov]

Sometimes I see discussions in chat rooms/forums and other places raising the question of the future of FPC from a long-term planning perspective. For example, someone may want to switch to it, but they have questions:

“How many developers are there in the FPC team?”
“What will happen if they leave the project?”

People are concerned that even if everything is fine now, what will happen in 10 years? Will their development become obsolete because it will no longer be possible to compile and support development for new operating systems and platforms?

Somehow they don't worry if Embarcadero will still exist in 10 years, while the non Pascal world  declared them dead 25 years ago.

[Martin_fr]

I believe the real problem in this project is lack of _direction_, this results in the absence of a clearly stated list of goals to be accomplished from one release to the next along with a reasonable time frame for those goals to be reached. 

Strange. As there are directions clearly stated. Such as widechar-rtl, sub-targets, managed types, ....
What is all that, if not directions?

[LeP]

Sometimes I see discussions in chat rooms/forums and other places raising the question of the future of FPC from a long-term planning perspective. For example, someone may want to switch to it, but they have questions:

“How many developers are there in the FPC team?”
“What will happen if they leave the project?”

People are concerned that even if everything is fine now, what will happen in 10 years? Will their development become obsolete because it will no longer be possible to compile and support development for new operating systems and platforms?

Somehow they don't worry if Embarcadero will still exist in 10 years, while the non Pascal world  declared them dead 25 years ago.

These are questions that entrepreneurs ask themselves when they decide to "use" a new tool or enter a new market, a new way of working, etc. (in simple terms).

I work and live with the tool (well, Delphi isn't the only tool, obviously), so all of this must provide solid guarantees. Therefore, it must look at all aspects of the issue broadly.

If I have a problem with Delphi (which is a paid environment, for those who don't remember), I send an email and a support team can resolve the issue or provide an alternative solution.
Forums and public groups don't always resolve issues, or at least it takes a long time (days/months) to get a definitive answer.

Those who work with these environments can't afford to be left stranded by a broken update or a third-party tool that no longer works in a new version.

And I don't want to have 1,000 environments installed to maintain compatibility across all my projects: all my projects are and must be ported to new versions and must be bug-free. My work environment must always have the latest version of the development environments... and with Delphi, that's always been the case.

With Lazarus and FPC, being open source projects without official, "due" support, an entrepreneur rightly wonders what the risks are in using them as tools for their work.

And I'm not talking about quality here, just opportunity.

[440bx]

Strange. As there are directions clearly stated. Such as widechar-rtl, sub-targets, managed types, ....
What is all that, if not directions?

The closest I see to a list of detailed goals v3.2.4 is going to meet is found at:
https://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_3.2.4

Honestly, if that is the list, I view that as rather inadequate.  It also seems to be an "after the fact" list, not  something that was planned beforehand but simply "this is what happened".

Is there somewhere something that says what the next release (after v3.2.4) is going to be _and_ what it will include as far as bug fixes and anything else planned to be in it ?  Note, I mean a fairly detailed and comprehensive list, nebulous stuff might be good for astronomers but not so much for programmers.

Is there somewhere a list of future FPC versions which not only list the bug fixes they will include but also the list of new features that will be found in it ?  IOW, a reasonable step-by-step map of where the compiler is going along with a reasonable estimate of when those milestones will be accomplished ?

That's what I call direction.  Having specific goals to accomplish and getting them done.

Adding features to a mythical future version of the compiler isn't my definition of direction.

[robert rozee]

I believe the real problem in this project is lack of _direction_, this results in the absence of a clearly stated list of goals to be accomplished from one release to the next along with a reasonable time frame for those goals to be reached. 

Strange. As there are directions clearly stated. Such as widechar-rtl, sub-targets, managed types, ....
What is all that, if not directions?

Marcov tells me that the last official released of the compiler (FPC 3.2.2) came out on 20th May, 2021 (uploaded to sourceforge 9th July, 2021) . that was over FOUR and a half YEARS ago. while there may have been the most earnest of "directions" in place since then, there has been no UPDATED package for FPC released to sourceforge over these past 4.5 years. and let us be realistic - the FPC/Lazarus homepage points to sourceforge as the place to get FPC from, so sourceforge will be where most users go to get their FPC install from.


cheers,
rob   :-)

[ALLIGATOR]

Actually, I wanted to compile a list/inventory of arguments why FPC will have a long life, for many years to come, rather than fall into yet another bout of pessimism about the fact that someone cannot use FPC [main]

By the way, FPC[main] is quite widely used in large, responsible commercial software
How is this possible? It's very simple: run various automatic tests on your software and its components to ensure that it works correctly

And you won't have any problems with FPC[main]

[Martin_fr]

Is there somewhere a list of future FPC versions which not only list the bug fixes they will include but also the list of new features that will be found in it ?  IOW, a reasonable step-by-step map of where the compiler is going along with a reasonable estimate of when those milestones will be accomplished ?

That's what I call direction.  Having specific goals to accomplish and getting them done.

Then that wasn't clear from your previous post. The info I referred to was stated in various places at various times.
It still showed that their is knowledge what they are aiming for.

And well yes, your above is an interpretation of the same word "direction". Not sure if applicable to the environment. (don't go looking, I am sure there are examples, but their existence doesn't make a general statement)

[marcov]

Somehow they don't worry if Embarcadero will still exist in 10 years, while the non Pascal world  declared them dead 25 years ago.

These are questions that entrepreneurs ask themselves when they decide to "use" a new tool or enter a new market, a new way of working, etc. (in simple terms).

I work and live with the tool (well, Delphi isn't the only tool, obviously), so all of this must provide solid guarantees. Therefore, it must look at all aspects of the issue broadly.

If I have a problem with Delphi (which is a paid environment, for those who don't remember), I send an email and a support team can resolve the issue or provide an alternative solution.
Forums and public groups don't always resolve issues, or at least it takes a long time (days/months) to get a definitive answer.

That is not reacting to what I said, which was about guarantee in <xx> years, not about now.   How do you know so sure that in 5 or 10 years there _still_ be an Embarcadero to call ?  Because that is the core of the matter, how long  your investments in Delphi now will last, isn't it ?

There is always a chance some tech giant with AI dollars buys them up for some patent, market or sub technology and puts everything else on ice in a relative short term. Same if there is some financial disaster. It happened with the previous toolchain I used, Topspeed when they were acquired by Clarion.

Or that they will still support whatever technology is crucial to you? Also not unthinkable, I think many of our fellow Delphinians were like me quite scared in the mid to late 2000s that the native platform they depended on would be axed in favour of a .NET only one.

As long as FPC's target platforms (windows and Linux approx in this form) survive, at least one of us amateurs will  probably still be answering on the forum, even if with less frequency. Paid people tend to cease when they are not paid :-)

And I don't want to have 1,000 environments installed to maintain compatibility across all my projects: all my projects are and must be ported to new versions and must be bug-free. My work environment must always have the latest version of the development environments... and with Delphi, that's always been the case.

I also am a full time professional Delphi user(*), for over 20 years now, but actually that "latest" is IMHO not true. I'm still on Delphi Seattle. I only used Delphi support to communicate on bugs.

(*) well at least I was till 2017 when I started porting parts to Lazarus. Nowadays everything runs on Lazarus except for the two big apps.

With Lazarus and FPC, being open source projects without official, "due" support, an entrepreneur rightly wonders what the risks are in using them as tools for their work.

And I'm not talking about quality here, just opportunity.

Only the people that read too many IT management rags.  Try to break down what those paper guarantees are really worth.

Basically I only look out to the coming next years up to maximally 5 years, assuming I need 1-2 years to rewrite, and ignore all the doomsaysers.

[backprop]

I hope that there are large and medium-sized businesses that are already heavily invested in FPC and, if necessary, will be able to support its development with human and financial resources (which is not happening now, at least not openly, because everyone is happy with the way things are)

It is bad idea to invest and rely in dying, badly supported and project which the most of people today do not use for anything more serious than nostalgia and fun. And whoever was here from beginning or time from time know hard time was. And still is after 20 or more years. Not to mention who become developers here... Every new release come with regression and new bugs and there is less and less support. Due years, this become a balance no one is able nor willing to handle. And what for, anyway?

"Write once and compile anywhere" is something was always utopia and with so many started platforms it will stay until collapse to itself...