Getting Started with Lazarus IDE: Get to grips with the basics of programming, debugging, creating, and documenting projects with the Lazarus IDE

The Lazarus binary RPM package is available from the Lazarus SourceForge.net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/) download area. Once you have accessed this page, choose the correct link for your platform package, in this case either Lazarus Linux x86_64 RPM for 64-bit platforms or Lazarus Linux i386 RPM for 32-bit platforms. We will be using the 32-bit package for this example. After clicking on the correct link, choose the current release link, in this case Lazarus 1.0.2. Once you are in this area, all the packages needed to install Lazarus are available to be downloaded. Download the following packages:

Also available is the optional package, fpc-debuginfo-2.6.0-0.laz.i686.rpm, which provides debug information for the system units. This is only needed if you want to do development for Free Pascal itself, which is beyond the scope of this book.

Before installing Free Pascal and Lazarus, the following programs are required on the Linux system:

GNU Make, this is optional but recommended for easy recompiling of the FPC compiler and Run-Time Library (RTL).

Lazarus requires the following libraries:

GTK+ 2.x or Qt: Most Linux distributions already install GTK+ 2.x. You can also download the libraries from http://www.gtk.org. Qt is also supported by most distributions and is installed together with KDE.

To begin the installation of Lazarus, log into your system as a root user. First install the Free Pascal for the Lazarus package containing the following command:

# rpm -UvH fpc-2.6.0-0.laz.i686.rpm

After the successful completion of this package, next we will need to install the Free Pascal source code package. The Free Pascal source code package is required to operate certain functions in Lazarus. If the IDE cannot find the Free Pascal source, the user will be presented with a warning box with the following message:

The Free Pascal source was not found. Some functions will not work.

To install the Free Pascal source, use the following command:

# rpm -UvH fpc-src-2.6.0-0.laz.i686.rpm

After the successful completion of the installation of the Free Pascal source, all that is left to do is to install the Lazarus IDE itself with the following command:

# rpm -UvH Lazarus-1.0-1.i386.rpm

With the successful completion of these three packages, you are ready to use the Lazarus IDE. Under the GNOME desktop, Lazarus can be accessed from the Applications menu under the Programming submenu.

For Debian-based Linux distributions, the SourceForge.net Lazarus repository contains Debian packages for 32-bit and 64-bit distributions. Access the SourceForge.net repository at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/. For 32-bit Debian-based distributions, choose the Lazarus Linux i386 DEB subfolder. For 64-bit Debian-based distributions, choose the Lazarus Linux amd64 DEB subfolder. Next, choose the current Lazarus release, which at the time of writing is Lazarus 1.0.2. Download all the Debian packages within this folder.

For 32-bit systems:

For 64-bit systems:

Once the packages are downloaded, install them using the following command:

dpkg -i <package_name>

Install each of the packages for Free Pascal, Free Pascal Source, and the Lazarus IDE.

There is an Ubuntu repository available at http://www.hu.freepascal.org that contains Lazarus and FPC debs. This repository can be used with apt-get. Before using this repository with apt-get, it first needs to be added to the apt.

First, we need to add the repository's gpg key to the apt keys with the following commands as a root user:

# gpg –keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu:11371 –recv-keys 6A11800F
# gpg -a –export 6A11800F | apt-key add -

Next, add the repository by editing /etc/apt/sources.list, adding the following line:

deb http://www.hu.freepascal.org/lazarus/lazarus-stable universe

Once the repository is added to the list of available repositories, Lazarus can be installed with the following commands, again as root:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install lazarus

Lazarus and Free Pascal are available as disk images (.dmg files) for Mac OS X for Intel-based Macs and PowerPC-based Macs from the SourceForge.net Repository at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/. The Mac OS X versions of Lazarus require the installation of Apple Developer Tools. This can be installed from the Mac OS X installation disks or downloaded from the Apple Developers Connection (ADC) at http://developer.apple.com. ADC requires registration, which is free. Once these tools have been installed, go to the SourceForge.net repository and select the correct subfolder for your Mac, Lazarus Mac OS X PowerPC, or Lazarus Mac OS X i386. Then choose the latest release of the Lazarus subfolder, which is Lazarus 1.0.2 at the time of writing, and download the disk images. For Mac OS X PowerPC, download the following:

For Mac OS X Intel:

Once the disk image files are downloaded, install them in the following order:

After installation, the Lazarus application can be found in /Developer/lazarus, the Free Pascal source files are in /usr/local/share/fpcsrc.

The FreeBSD ports collection contains, at the time of writing, 91 separate ports for Free Pascal. These ports are divided into subcategories such as graphics, math, and multimedia. This is in keeping with the FreeBSD philosophy of only installing necessary packages to keep this system as small as possible and easily maintainable. For Lazarus, the ports collection contains six separate ports; among them are GTK+, GTK2+, and Qt toolkit versions of Lazarus. The simplest way to install Free Pascal is to log in as a root user and issue the following commands:

# cd /usr/ports/lang/fpc
# make install clean

This will install the Free Pascal meta port. Meta port in FreeBSD is a port that installs multiple sub ports. In this case, the fpc meta port will install all 91 Free Pascal port. In addition to these ports, any requirements not installed on the system will also be automatically installed. If you are an advanced FreeBSD user and know exactly the type of development you are going to do with Lazarus and Free Pascal, you can install only the needed individual ports of the 91 available.

The easiest way to install Lazarus is to use the meta port located in /usr/ports/editors/lazarus. Remain logged in as root and issue the following commands:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/lazarus
# make config

This will bring up the Options for Lazarus dialog box as seen in the screenshot that follows. In this dialog, you can choose to either install the GTK2 interface or the QT4 interface for the IDE. You can only choose one of the two options, choosing both will cause an error during installation.

After selecting the desired interface and selecting OK, continue installing by issuing the following command:

# make install clean

Once the installation is complete, Lazarus will be installed in /usr/local/bin and can be started with the following command:

$ /usr/local/bin/startlazarus

For operating systems that don't have a binary package available, Lazarus can be built using the source code.

Lazarus and Free Pascal source code is available through Subversion (SVN). The SVN repositories provide the most up-to-date source code available. The SVN repositories also allow you to track only the changes in the source. Although, SVN access requires an Internet connection, it does not require the user to be root.

When downloading the source, you need to make sure that you have enough free space. The initial checkout requires approximately 270 MB of free space. To begin the installation from source, first make sure that current working folder is the folder that you want the source code to be present in. For the initial checkout, use the following command:

$ svn checkout http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/trunk/ lazarus

This will download the latest available source code to the lazarus subfolder, which will be created in the current folder. Once the download is completed, compile the source code by using the following command:

$ cd lazarus
$ make

Once the build is complete, Lazarus can be started from the current folder with the following command:

$ ./startlazarus

To keep Lazarus up-to-date, from the parent folder of the Lazarus source code, use the following commands:

$ svn update lazarus
$ cd lazarus
$ make clean all

This will rebuild the Lazarus IDE without packages. After the build is done, then use the following command to link to the existing Lazarus packages:

$ ./lazbuild –build-ide=