Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
On 07/08/2010 10:06 PM, Peter Alcibiades wrote: You see, Richmond, what you needed was regular expressions. What I need is a da*n good holiday! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
You see, Richmond, what you needed was regular expressions. -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Writing-Externals-in-Pascal-tp2278157p2282719.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Mark I suspect that writing a dynamic link library for use with Rebol is likely to be easier than writing an external for Revolution. The Rebol language is evaluated not compiled. I found writing a dynamic link library with FPC quite straightforward though I encountered two problems which I have been able to overcome. The first could hinder developing complicated externals for Revolution. FPC does not support error handling in dynamic link libraries, so no try/finally etc.. I believe this is due to the difficulty of coming up with a cross-platform implementation. This limitation can probably be overcome through conservative and defensive coding in most cases. In my case, I perform additional validations in the Rebol module that calls the dynamic link library. The second is that there is a conflict between the Mac OS X Snow Leopard linker and FPC. There is a work around but the resulting dynamic link library is not fully stable. I believe this is something to do with initialisation and termination routines. The workaround is to compile the dynamic link library under Mac OS X Leopard. The dynamic link library is very simple but runs successfully on Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS X. Regards Peter On 8 Jul 2010, at 00:26, Mark Wieder wrote: > Peter- > > Monday, July 5, 2010, 4:59:11 PM, you wrote: > >> Free Pascal. At the moment, I am testing calling a dynamic load >> library written in Free Pascal from Rebol (a language written in C) >> using C calling conventions. > > Keep us posted on your progress - that's a promising start. > > -- > -Mark Wieder > mwie...@ahsoftware.net > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
On 07/07/2010 08:56 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote: Whoa! Pascal still lives?? Maybe I am not so old after all. Bob Sorry to dash your illusions; I studied PASCAL 5 in 1985; Thee and Me are alive, and so is PASCAL; neither Thee, not Me, nor PASCAL are as young as we were in 1985. Hey; anybody remember MINIFORTRAN? I remember when I was visiting Mum and Dad at New Year seeing my PASCAL final project lurking in the attic; maybe I should get it out and 'give it a whirl'. Mind you typing the whole thing into the machine will be a real labour of love. What I do remember is: 1. It was a program for making a concordance of a text. [This was conceived because I was sent 'over' from the Philosophy department to the Maths dept. for computer programming. The lecturers all made loud and public fun of the "wierdo in the kilt from the Philosophy dept" and said that ONLY mathematicians could program; and that PASCAL, being a serious, hairy-chested sort of computer language, could only deal with crunching numbers - hence my determination to crunch text]. 2. A long-suffering 'slave' in the computer building (full of enormous tape drives that went "whirr, whirr") typed in an English translation of Leibniz's 'Monadologie'. 3. The program crashed the University computer (hurrah, hurrah - let's hear it for Mathewson). I will probably be able to run it on a Pentium II I have, running FreeDOS with the GEM GUI (lovely job) and some sort of cheapo PASCAL - in all likelihood the 32 MB RAM is more than the University of Durham had in 1985. 4. An incredibly seedy man who was my computer supervisor almost tied himself in knots having to admit that my program was the best of the 100 students in the year. Extra fun was had because I asked the head of Philosophy to accompany me to the meeting so that I could make a formal complaint about departmental bullying towards me because I was an Arts student. About once every 5 years I go back to Durham to visit . . . . . . the pubs where I did most of my studying; and everytime I pass the building that housed the VAX (I wonder what is in there now?) I blow it a kiss - Wow I wish my life now was as much fun as when I was an undergraduate ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
The 2010 version of Delphi is a killer development environment and the 2011 version will have cross-compile for OS X. You can tell its what I do a lot of work in! Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software www.abrohamnealsoftware.com (540) 645 5394 NEW PHONE NUMBER On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote: > Whoa! Pascal still lives?? Maybe I am not so old after all. > > Bob > > > On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Mark Wieder wrote: > > > Peter- > > > > Monday, July 5, 2010, 4:59:11 PM, you wrote: > > > >> Free Pascal. At the moment, I am testing calling a dynamic load > >> library written in Free Pascal from Rebol (a language written in C) > >> using C calling conventions. > > > > Keep us posted on your progress - that's a promising start. > > > > -- > > -Mark Wieder > > mwie...@ahsoftware.net > > > > ___ > > use-revolution mailing list > > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Whoa! Pascal still lives?? Maybe I am not so old after all. Bob On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Mark Wieder wrote: > Peter- > > Monday, July 5, 2010, 4:59:11 PM, you wrote: > >> Free Pascal. At the moment, I am testing calling a dynamic load >> library written in Free Pascal from Rebol (a language written in C) >> using C calling conventions. > > Keep us posted on your progress - that's a promising start. > > -- > -Mark Wieder > mwie...@ahsoftware.net > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Peter- Monday, July 5, 2010, 4:59:11 PM, you wrote: > Free Pascal. At the moment, I am testing calling a dynamic load > library written in Free Pascal from Rebol (a language written in C) > using C calling conventions. Keep us posted on your progress - that's a promising start. -- -Mark Wieder mwie...@ahsoftware.net ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Peter, Thanks for your tips from using Free Pascal with Rebol. You have confirmed what I though from the Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) documentation, that it should be able to make libraries that are indistinguishable from those made from a C compiler. Now it is more a question of time, as I am busy with some other (paying) projects written in Revolution, and so the FPC Externals SDK really is just a side project to do in those spare(?!) moments. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Hi Scott
I am also be interested in being able to develop externals in Free Pascal. At
the moment, I am testing calling a dynamic load library written in Free Pascal
from Rebol (a language written in C) using C calling conventions.
> It is impossible to get the level
> of granularity of compiler options with Borland's compilers
> (C++ Builder, Delphi) to get the combination of:
> 1. no leading underscore
You get to name the function in FPC. Here is an extract from my dll:
{$ifndef Darwin}
exports
version name 'version';
{$else}
exports
version name '_version';
{$endif}
> 2. mixed case exported symbols
I tested with a mixed case function name:
exports
accountingformat name '_accountingFormat',
version name '_version';
> 3. C-style parameter passing (first to last)
> 4- C-style stack frames (calling program cleans up
> the stack)
FPC includes a modifier for the cdecl calling convention (which I believe
answers 3 & 4). Here is an example:
procedure version(var answer: shortstring);cdecl;
begin
answer := CurrentVersion;
end;
Regards
Peter Wood
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Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Thanks for the extra tips. At this stage I have only done a quick read of the documentation of the Free Pascal Compiler, but from what I have read it appears more flexible than the Borland compilers in terms of the libraries it can produce. But I won't really know what it is capable of until I do some experiments. The comments and interest are encouraging though. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Andre- Monday, July 5, 2010, 8:35:01 AM, you wrote: > Argh! I remember that bug in 2005... > just commented and voted on it again. > argh! I wouldn't bother wasting votes on this. I finally pulled my votes away and put them to better use on other bug reports. It's A) filed as an enhancement, so it'll get *no* attention from the team B) assigned to an engineer no longer with the company -- -Mark Wieder mwie...@ahsoftware.net ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Hi Scott, Hopefully, you could find help among the Free Pascal developers and programmers to workaround the problems that Mark Wieder reported in 2004: -- http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=1526 Presently only external libraries in Microsoft-compatible binary form will work with the engine. This is due to the necessity of recognizing a signature of the exported Xtable and Xname items. It is impossible to get the level of granularity of compiler options with Borland's compilers (C++ Builder, Delphi) to get the combination of: 1. no leading underscore 2. mixed case exported symbols 3. C-style parameter passing (first to last) 4- C-style stack frames (calling program cleans up the stack) The way around this would be to accept alternate entry points of _Xtable and _Xname if the first check of Xtable and Xname failed. This would open up the development of external libraries to existing BCCB and Delphi programmers and allow the simple modification of libraries that currently exist for other environments. To me this seems like a simple change to the engine with large paybacks in terms of opening things up for third-parties to develop add-ons. Al -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Writing-Externals-in-Pascal-tp2278157p2278631.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Argh! I remember that bug in 2005... just commented and voted on it again. argh! On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Mark Wieder wrote: > Scott- > > Things may have changed with Delphi, but I fear you may run into the > problem I had back in 2004 when I attempted this. See bug #1526. The > issue was the inability to coax Borland compilers into the proper > combination of compiler options to export symbols that the runrev > engine would recognize as valid. > > -- > -Mark Wieder > mwie...@ahsoftware.net > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > -- http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Scott- Things may have changed with Delphi, but I fear you may run into the problem I had back in 2004 when I attempted this. See bug #1526. The issue was the inability to coax Borland compilers into the proper combination of compiler options to export symbols that the runrev engine would recognize as valid. -- -Mark Wieder mwie...@ahsoftware.net ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Thanks for the info. I hope the problems can be resolved. -=>JB<=- On Jul 5, 2010, at 6:05 AM, RunRevPlanet wrote: Alistair, Thank you for the offer. Nice to hear from another Delphi familiar. If I start the project I will certainly let you know, if I need assistance. -=>JB<=-, Free Pascal is a cross platform Pascal compiler that does standard Object Pascal plus more. It is also largely compatible with the Turbo Pascal 7 and Delphi 7 extensions to the Pascal language that have been part of the Borland (Embarcadero these days) line of compilers. While Lararus is a IDE that is built on top of Free Pascal, initially to "clone" the Delphi IDE, but which is now going in it's own direction. Most significantly, both these tools are cross-platform and can produce binaries for Mac and Windows (as well as many other platforms). Andre, I did a search here before launching this idea and found your previous messages about it. The linker issues may still exist, but Free Pascal has come quite a way since then, and I am hoping that the issues from before may now be resolvable. ooOOOoo Before coming to Revolution, Pascal/Delphi was my language of choice (which it still is for some types of projects) and so if I could write Externals with it for Revolution that would be a nice productivity boost. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Alistair, Thank you for the offer. Nice to hear from another Delphi familiar. If I start the project I will certainly let you know, if I need assistance. -=>JB<=-, Free Pascal is a cross platform Pascal compiler that does standard Object Pascal plus more. It is also largely compatible with the Turbo Pascal 7 and Delphi 7 extensions to the Pascal language that have been part of the Borland (Embarcadero these days) line of compilers. While Lararus is a IDE that is built on top of Free Pascal, initially to "clone" the Delphi IDE, but which is now going in it's own direction. Most significantly, both these tools are cross-platform and can produce binaries for Mac and Windows (as well as many other platforms). Andre, I did a search here before launching this idea and found your previous messages about it. The linker issues may still exist, but Free Pascal has come quite a way since then, and I am hoping that the issues from before may now be resolvable. ooOOOoo Before coming to Revolution, Pascal/Delphi was my language of choice (which it still is for some types of projects) and so if I could write Externals with it for Revolution that would be a nice productivity boost. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Scott, Been there as well. I remember many many many years ago talking about this exact topic with members of the community and with if I recall, there were some troubles in the way FPC generated the libraries, some linker stuff which might not be a problem these days. It would be a wonderful feature if Rev had a comprehensive FFI so that we could use other languages besides C/C++ to extend it. Cheers andre PS: Stay tunned for some stuff I am about to release about interoperation. On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 5:49 AM, RunRevPlanet < runrevpla...@smpcs.server101.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > Trying to gauge the potential interest in a Revolution Externals SDK that > could allow you to develop externals in Lazarus/Free Pascal. Instead of > requiring some form of C/C++ wrapper, which is the only language that is > currently supported by the official Externals SDK. > > To be able to write externals purely in a Pascal/Delphi dialect would be > useful to me, but I do not know for certain if it can be done with Free > Pascal -- there may be linking or name mangling issues which prevent it from > working. > > * So before trying, I am just wondering what level of interest there would > be in such a resource? > > If it's just me who still uses Pascal, then I probably won't even bother > thinking further about it. But if there is interest, who knows... > > Note, I have little free time for such a project, so even if there is > significant interest, I make no promises about whether it will happen, or > when. > -- > Scott McDonald > > RunRevPlanet.com > "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" > www.runrevplanet.com > > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > -- http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
I would be interested in programming externals in Pascal but I am not familiar with the pascal you mentioned so I can't comment on the choice of pascal. -=>JB<=- On Jul 5, 2010, at 1:49 AM, RunRevPlanet wrote: Hi All, Trying to gauge the potential interest in a Revolution Externals SDK that could allow you to develop externals in Lazarus/Free Pascal. Instead of requiring some form of C/C++ wrapper, which is the only language that is currently supported by the official Externals SDK. To be able to write externals purely in a Pascal/Delphi dialect would be useful to me, but I do not know for certain if it can be done with Free Pascal -- there may be linking or name mangling issues which prevent it from working. * So before trying, I am just wondering what level of interest there would be in such a resource? If it's just me who still uses Pascal, then I probably won't even bother thinking further about it. But if there is interest, who knows... Note, I have little free time for such a project, so even if there is significant interest, I make no promises about whether it will happen, or when. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Writing Externals in Pascal?
Hi Scott, I would be interested. I used to program in Delphi a fair bit- though I am purely an amateur. I would certainly rather write externals in pascal than C. Like you I don't have a lot of time, and I doubt I have the expertise, but I would be interested in helping where I can. cheers Alistair -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Writing-Externals-in-Pascal-tp2278157p2278201.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Writing Externals in Pascal?
Hi All, Trying to gauge the potential interest in a Revolution Externals SDK that could allow you to develop externals in Lazarus/Free Pascal. Instead of requiring some form of C/C++ wrapper, which is the only language that is currently supported by the official Externals SDK. To be able to write externals purely in a Pascal/Delphi dialect would be useful to me, but I do not know for certain if it can be done with Free Pascal -- there may be linking or name mangling issues which prevent it from working. * So before trying, I am just wondering what level of interest there would be in such a resource? If it's just me who still uses Pascal, then I probably won't even bother thinking further about it. But if there is interest, who knows... Note, I have little free time for such a project, so even if there is significant interest, I make no promises about whether it will happen, or when. -- Scott McDonald RunRevPlanet.com "Components, Stacks, Tools and Resources for Runtime Revolution" www.runrevplanet.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
