Pandora Running Lazarus on Pandora


ZXDunny

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Ok, I'm about ready to start developing for my new baby. One thing I would like to do is to build Lazarus and FPC to run on the Pandora, so I can code when the mood strikes. Not the same as developing on a PC, sure, but it would be very handy.


I can find info on getting Lazarus to output ARM binaries, but nothing on building FPC and the IDE for ARM-Linux. I'd like to create a PND that I can run from my spare 4GB SD Card.


Anyone got any info or pointers (or even a PND!) to share?


D.
 
Ok, I'm about ready to start developing for my new baby. One thing I would like to do is to build Lazarus and FPC to run on the Pandora, so I can code when the mood strikes. Not the same as developing on a PC, sure, but it would be very handy.


I can find info on getting Lazarus to output ARM binaries, but nothing on building FPC and the IDE for ARM-Linux. I'd like to create a PND that I can run from my spare 4GB SD Card.


Anyone got any info or pointers (or even a PND!) to share?


D.
Hum. Lazarus can be set to cross-compile for ARM so it can build ARM binaries for sure.


As its build system is based on the standard autoconf/automake, I guess all you need to do is building it on your pandora as you would have done on your PC.
 
Hum. Lazarus can be set to cross-compile for ARM so it can build ARM binaries for sure.


As its build system is based on the standard autoconf/automake, I guess all you need to do is building it on your pandora as you would have done on your PC.

That's what I was thinking - does the Pandora come with the appropriate tools needed to build it natively? Also, how do I get it to build without touching NAND? ie, all files produced straight to SD-Card?


D.
 
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Cross platform Pascal-ish compiler? Neat!


I wonder just how compatible this would be with some of the Delphi programs people have been asking about.
 
Ah I always wanted to get into Lazarus to see whether my Delphi programs compile, never found time to do so :S


Anyway, good to hear at least FPC could work on the Pandora :)
 
Well, I'm gonna give this a go - but I've only ever built Lazarus from source on my ubuntu install, which has GBs of space and of course I don't care where things end up.


This is a tad scary - I don't want *anything* to end up on NAND, I want it all to go onto my SD Card so I can PND it up later on.


I assume I'll need a development environment to start with - any suggestions as to what I'll need?


I'm grabbing the ARM-Linux binary from the FPC site, which should be enough to get going with FPC on the Pandora. It contains an install script, which I assume will either:


1. Need modification to install to SD, or


2. Require me to make modifications to my environment variables so it thinks the system lives on an SD.


God, this is getting confusing now.


I'll have to try Lazarus a little later, I'll concentrate on getting FPC working for now!


D.
 
I know one of the guys who develops lazarus, I'm just asking him if anyone has run the IDE on ARM before. I have a feeling the answer is going to be no, and it can't be done, but we'll see. I'm not 100% on the details of this, but I believe it's something along the lines of - Lazarus uses freepascal, and freepascal needs an old version of the freepascal compiler to bootstrap itself to build (hence no freepascal on openBSD). I suspect the same problem will occur building freepascal on ARM. But maybe you can get around it by cross-compiling, who knows.


If it needs autotools I'd think it might be tricky to build on the pandora itself - last I checked angstrom does not have autotools, and I couldn't get them to build in a usable fashion on there, I ended up cross compiling, so again, that might work.


Essentially, it's a can of worms.
 
Yeah, I gave up - FPC on ARM is possible (I've seen it done) but it's a pain. Lazarus could be built with it, but it would be pointless; the memory requirements are huge and completely overshadow similar requirements in Borland Delphi. So I build my ARM binaries with ppcarm instead on x86, although I'm not sure if the compiler is up to snuff - the binary runs a lot slower on my Pandora at 600MHz than it does on my 333MHz x86, and both are single core devices :-(


D.
 
My friend said it should be possible, as lazurus builds lazarus and can target ARM, but as far as he knows no one has done it yet. So maybe the FPC thing isn't the main issue.


But beyond that I know nothing!
 
Lazarus is absolutely supposed to work on ARM platforms.


Since I don't have my pandora yet, I can't give it a try. :(


But I'd love to code with Lazarus for the Pandora Rebirth Competition.


But how to do that without a pandora?


Cross-compiling with static libraries might work, I don't know.


@ZXDunny: If I send you some static execs, would you care to try 'em out?


And as soon as I have something worth testing, I will be in need of beta-testers... ;)


Oh, and regarding binary-sizes check out


http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Size_Matters
 
If you have binaries to test, you could go to #openpandora on freenode.


There are always some helpful people who might test them for you :)
 
Lazarus is absolutely supposed to work on ARM platforms.


Since I don't have my pandora yet, I can't give it a try. :(


But I'd love to code with Lazarus for the Pandora Rebirth Competition.


But how to do that without a pandora?


Cross-compiling with static libraries might work, I don't know.


@ZXDunny: If I send you some static execs, would you care to try 'em out?


And as soon as I have something worth testing, I will be in need of beta-testers... ;)


Oh, and regarding binary-sizes check out


http://wiki.lazarus....rg/Size_Matters


I'd love to - I've been content to build my projects with Lazarus and FPC/ARM on x86/Debian, which works well but is sub-optimal - would be lovely to build on the Pandora itself :)


D.
 
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