GNU Pascal: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 11:47, 18 May 2025

GNU Pascal (GPC) is an implementation of the Pascal programming language that is compatible with the GNU toolchain- It is compliant with ISO Pascal and Borland Pascal with some extensions taken from (but by no means fully compatible with) Pascal-SC, Extended ISO Pascal and Borland Delphi, and a few extensions of its own, primarily intended to ease compatibility with different UNIX OSs and GNU's GCC. GNU Pascal requires that GCC and other parts of the GNU toolchain.

The project was originally started in the 1990s by Jukka Virtanen and was then an ISO compatible tool that partially supported the ISO Extended Pascal standard. It was made in response to the complete lack of free ISO Pascal tools generally and specifically the almost complete lack of Pascal implementations that worked under Unices. Peter Gerwinski who did the OS/2 and DOS port then started implementing Borland/Turbo Pascal compatibility in the latter half of the 90s. Despite the existing number of free TP compatible implementations already and they have mushroomed since, no further work has been done since the early 90s to make the tools more Extended ISO Pascal compatible. This contributed to the death of the project since after Free Pascal arrived on the scene that was a Turbo Pascal clone from the outset and easier to use to boot, specially on MS Windows. Free Pascal grabbed most of the mindset and contributors from GNU Pascal.

GPC is notoriously slow in compiling and no real development on the compiler has taken place since 2005 although the project is supposedly still alive, and the OS/2 version is even older since they never ported it from EMX toolchain to the GCC one, although it is somewhat usable as it stands. It can be considered a dead duck by now since it does not work with modern versions of the GNU toolchain.

Versions

1.0 (Jun 1994)
1.1 (Dec 1995) - GCC 2.6.3
2.0 (Dec 1996) - GCC 2.7.2.1
2.1 (May 2002) - GCC 2.8.1, 2.95.x
(2005-03-31) - GCC 2.8.1, 2.95.x, 3.2.x, 3.3.x, 3.4.x

Prerequisites

OS/2 2.1 or later
emx 0.9c or later
EMX runtime (emxrt.zip), EMX development system (emxdev*.zip), GNU development tools (gnudev*.zip)

Known issues

Debugger output not fully compatible with GDB

Links

GNU Pascal HQ

License

Open source published under the GPL v2
Some included libraries are under the LGPL v2.1

Authors

Jukka Virtanen (Original author)
Peter Gerwinski (OS/2 & DOS port, Borland Pascal compatibility)
Jan-Jaap van der Heijden (Windows port)
Frank Heckenbach (Current maintainer)
Waldek Hebisch
Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (Borland compatibility)
Dominik Freche (Manual)

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Commonly referred to as '''GPC''', GNU Pascal is an implementation of the [[Pascal]] programming language that is compatible with the [[GNU Toolchain]], it is compliant with [[ISO Pascal]] and [[Borland Pascal]] with some extension taken from (but by no means fully compatible with) [[Pascal-SC]], Extended ISO Pascal and [[Borland Delphi]], and a few extensions of its own, primarily intended to ease compatibility with different [[UNIX]] OS's and GNU's [[GCC]]. GNU Pascal requires that the [[GCC]] and other parts of the GNU toolchain already exists on your system, or that you download a version of GPC that already contains the relevant GNU tools.
+'''GNU Pascal''' ('''GPC''') is an implementation of the [[Pascal]] programming language that is compatible with the GNU toolchain- It is compliant with ISO Pascal and [[Borland Pascal]] with some extensions taken from (but by no means fully compatible with) Pascal-SC, Extended ISO Pascal and [[Borland Delphi]], and a few extensions of its own, primarily intended to ease compatibility with different [[UNIX]] OSs and GNU's [[GCC]]. GNU Pascal requires that GCC and other parts of the GNU toolchain.
-The project was originally started in the 1990's by Jukka Virtanen and was then an ISO compatible tool that partially supported the ISO Extended Pascal standard, it was made in response to the complete lack of free ISO Pascal tools generally and specifically the almost complete lack of Pascal implementations that worked under Unices. [[Peter Gerwinski]] who did the OS/2 and [[DOS]] port then started implementing Borland/Turbo Pascal compatibility in the latter half of the 90's, despite there existing a number of free TP compatible implementations already and they have mushroomed since, no further work has been done since the early 90's to make the tools more Extended ISO Pascal compatible. This contributed to the death of the project since after [[Free Pascal]] arrived on the scene that was a Turbo Pascal clone from the outset and easier to use to boot, specially on [[MS Windows]], Free Pascal grabbed most of the mindset and contributors from GNU Pascal.
+The project was originally started in the 1990s by Jukka Virtanen and was then an ISO compatible tool that partially supported the ISO Extended Pascal standard. It was made in response to the complete lack of free ISO Pascal tools generally and specifically the almost complete lack of Pascal implementations that worked under Unices. [[Peter Gerwinski]] who did the OS/2 and [[DOS]] port then started implementing Borland/Turbo Pascal compatibility in the latter half of the 90s. Despite the existing number of free TP compatible implementations already and they have mushroomed since, no further work has been done since the early 90s to make the tools more Extended ISO Pascal compatible. This contributed to the death of the project since after [[Free Pascal]] arrived on the scene that was a Turbo Pascal clone from the outset and easier to use to boot, specially on [[MS Windows]]. Free Pascal grabbed most of the mindset and contributors from GNU Pascal.
-BTW GPC is notoriously slow in compiling and no real development on the compiler has taken place since 2005 although the project is supposedly still alive, and the OS/2 version is even older since they never ported it from [[EMX]] toolchain to the GCC one, although it is somewhat usable as it stands. It can be considered a dead duck by now since it does not work with modern versions of the GNU toolchain.
+GPC is notoriously slow in compiling and no real development on the compiler has taken place since 2005 although the project is supposedly still alive, and the OS/2 version is even older since they never ported it from [[EMX]] toolchain to the GCC one, although it is somewhat usable as it stands. It can be considered a dead duck by now since it does not work with modern versions of the GNU toolchain.
 ==Versions==
-* Current version: 2.1 [http://www.gnu-pascal.de/alpha/ Sources here]
+* 1.0 (Jun 1994)
-* '''Last known OS/2 and DOS versions:'''  2.0
+* 1.1 (Dec 1995) - GCC 2.6.3
-;Preresiquites:
+* 2.0 (Dec 1996) - GCC 2.7.2.1
-* OS/2 2.1 or later.
+* 2.1 (May 2002) - GCC 2.8.1, 2.95.x
-* [[EMX]] 0.91 or later.
+* (2005-03-31) - GCC 2.8.1, 2.95.x, 3.2.x, 3.3.x, 3.4.x
-* EMX GCC compiler.
+;Prerequisites:
+* OS/2 2.1 or later
+* [[emx]] 0.9c or later
+* EMX runtime (emxrt.zip), EMX development system (emxdev*.zip), GNU development tools (gnudev*.zip)
 ;Known issues:
 * Debugger output not fully compatible with [[GDB]]
 ==Links==
 * [http://www.gnu-pascal.de GNU Pascal HQ]
@@ Line 30: / Line 35: @@
 * Dominik Freche (Manual)
-[[Category:Tools]][[Category:DOS Tools]][[Category:Pascal]][[Category:Open Source Software]][[Category:Linux Tools]][[Category:Hurd Tools]][[Category:SGI Irix Tools]][[Category:MS Windows Tools]][[Category:MAC OSX Tools]][[Category:HPUX Tools]][[Category:Solaris Tools]][[Category:Digital Unix Tools]][[Category:BSD Tools]]
+[[Category:Pascal]][[Category:Open Source Software]]