Re: Re: JD...
  By: Scott Adams to Stephen Hurd on Thu Feb 19 2004 21:26:11

 >  SH> Of all the free *nix pascal compilers out there, only FP and GPC will
 >  SH> run on non-Linux plavours of *nix.
 > 
 >      Well the question was not linux but since you bring it up there
 >      are very limited linux versions of ANY language.

Actually, I believe the question was cross-platform with focus on *nix
platforms... though I could be wrong there... too lazy to go back in the
thread.  :-)

> SH> Bascially, if you're not porting to Linux and Linux only, all except
> SH> GPC are going to cause more problems than solutions.
> 
>     Possible.  Depends on what you need the language/program to do.

Generally, I need to program to do what it's programmed to do... and the
compiler to properly compile it.  When you compile a program, and start getting
bug reports, it's really not feasable to debug both your program AND your
compiler well, things start getting too hairy too fast.  When you also can't
depend on the standard units to work as documented, you end up having to first,
go through your program and make sure it's correct, second, go through any
included standard units and make sure THEY are correct, then go through the
compiler and ensure that IT is correct.  You quickly loose interest in using
the compiler for anything usefull.

I did spend a largish amount of time porting Pascal doors to FPC... when
debugging became effectivly impossible to to compiler errors, I simply stopped
working on them... it's faster to translate the program into a language that
DOES compile correctly on the target platform (Something I did with TimePort)
than it is to port/debug/unit debug/compiler debug the program in its native
language.

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