The Free Pascal for BeOS initiative / News: Recent posts

We have updated the page of BeFPC project. With no some downloads, and we would maintained news and screenshoots when avaible.

Yesterday, the BePascal library has reach a major milestone : it is now possible to write simple GUI apps in pascal under BeOS. The implementation of BButton and BView are nearly complete (but not bug free :-(.

On the compiler front, we are working with the fpc team to compile fpc 1.1 (the current developpement version) to BeOS (currently, only fpc 1.0.6 compile under BeOS). This branch has at least one major improvement for us : threadsafe support.

The initial source for the Be API wrapper and a Pascal import library are now in CVS. Feel free to grab a copy and give feedback.

We're also happy to welcome Eric Jourde to the project as an Administrator. Eric will now look after the Pascal side of things, and has already written the first *real* app in Pascal using the Wrapper.

After a bit of a hiatus, this project has actually made a little progress.

The BeAPI wrapper is well under way. I've gone through a number of revisions, and now have single window apps running with Buttons, TextBoxes, 'Memo' and 'Panel' stype components working.

NB. All of this is running under R5. I have not tested anything under R4.5 and not tried the wrapper on PPC yet.

The cvs repository will be imported into the sourceforge repository as soon as a few details are finalized (there are locking issues to deal with when using multiple forms.)... read more

I've been ill on and off for the last two weeks. I actually took 2 days sick leave last week (6/7th Aug 2001), and I've been feeling crappy ever since. Things have been on hold.

I've done a couple of Be Related tasks.. I ported Doom to give me something to play with in my sick bed, and I got Sound working in my Manic Miner port (see BeBits - though the BeNews site is currently down, and this hosts the zip file.) I'm also dirverted with thoughts of making a Maestro 2E driver for my laptop.. hmmm.. I have the Linux source for a driver plus every Sound Driver vaugly related with source on the Be side.... read more

The source for the compiler is now in CVS. I don't see myself doing much with it until I figure out if the official FPC team will produce a BeOS release of 1.04+ of their compiler.

Feel free to play with the source.

The next big revision I see happening will be to remove all of the cross platform redundancy, if if affects the compiler size, and do a general clean up.

I've made some progress on the BeCL front. The underlying API has had a start made, and I hope to release an initial version asap. The initial API will be called 'simpleapp' which will allow the user to create a simple single formed application with widgets (buttons, checkboxes and editboxes initially) and assign events. BeCL propper will evolve out of the primordial soup (so to speak.) There may not be a clear beginning and ending, so stay tuned. ... read more

Okay, so I've been busy for the past two weeks!!

I have resolved a number of issues I had with BeFPC and I'm pretty much ready to put a starting point build into CVS. I'll release some files (a BeOS package probably) either this weekend or early next week.

Progress will begin again after that point!!

The current 1.00 binaries can be found at:

http://pixel32.box.sk/index.php?cat=About&sub=FreePascal

The port is also integrated into the current source 1.04 tree at http://www.freepascal.org but there is as yet no binary distro from that source.

At the moment I (memson) am looking for people to help out in any way they can, be it compiler additions, testing etc.. help with the C wrapper needed around the C++ Be API.. ideas on what the BeCL should contain, how closely it should follow the Be API/CLX/VCL etc.

Contact me directly if you want to contribute.

Thanks,

Matt