13 - Installing FPC (FreePascal Compiler)

Null diskmag Issue 1

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

null magazine

 · 3 years ago

freepascal installation guide by xqtr of 
                                    another droid bbs / andr01d.zapto.org:9999 

::d o w n l o a d:: 
just go to https://freepascal.org/download.var and get the newest version of 
freepascal for the platform you want. you can install it on raspberry pi or an 
old netbook, except your high end pc computer. 

prefer to get the one big tar file, which contains everything and its also easy 
to install. get this file, extract it in a temp directory and proceed to next 
step. 

::i n s t a l l:: 
go to the temp directory, you extracted the .tar file. inside you will see a 
script, named install.sh. you can execute this with root priveleges or as a 
normal user. if you plan to install freepascal to /usr/bin the execute that 
script with: 
                              sudo ./install.sh 

my way is to install freepascal to a different directory where i put all my 
programming files, compilers etc. for example suppose we are installing fp to 
a directory names as fpc in your home directory. so excute the installation 
script as a normal user with: 

                              ./install.sh 

just follow the instructions and when you asked about the installation folder, 
enter the one you prefer. for example /home/user/fpc. the script will also ask 
about installing some source code, examples and documentation. if you have 
enough free space, install them all. they are useful and may be you will need 
them in the future. 

after the installation is finished we have to configure the system to find any 
libraries and also execute the compiler from where ever directory we are in. 

::c o n f i g u r a t i o n:: 
because we executed the installation script with normal priveleges, it hasn't 
saved the config file to the default location which is /etc/fpc.cfg. instead 
you will find it inside the ./bin folder, inside the folder where you installed 
freepascal. copy that file to your home directory and name it like .fpc.cfg. 
if you installed freepascal at /home/user/fpc then give the following command: 

                        cp ~/fpc/fpc.cfg ~/.fpc.cfg 

also we have to tell to the system where to find the bin utils and compiler of 
freepascal. so we have to add to the path enviroment variable the directory in 
which we installed freepascal. with an editor like nano, vi, gedit, geany, edit 
the file .bashrc which is inside your home folder like this: 

                                nano .bashrc 

to the bottom of the file add the following: 

  PATH=$PATH:~/fpc/bin 
  export PATH 

this will tell to the system to also look inside the ~/fpc/bin directory for 
executables, which fpc compiler is. to enable the changes give the following 
command: 

                            source ~/.bashrc 

you are ready to use freepascal. to test it out, just execute fpc in a terminal 
and also execute the program fp which is a very cool ide for freepascal. 

::e x t r a s:: 
even though you are ready to use freepascal and make some cool programs, in the 
future you may need some extra libraries, like sqlite. freepascal has units to 
support sqlite, but it needs also a library to be installed, to the system. to 
do so, install the libsqlite3-dev package with: 

                    sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev 

for playing mod, xm, it etc track files you will need the bass library, which 
is awesome. you can find it at: http://www.un4seen.com/ 

for cool graphics, with lighting effects, sprites and more install the zengl 
engine, from http://zengl.org/. 

more about freepascal and development for ascii/ansi graphics to come in the 
future ;)