2.2 Installing the compiler.

The installation of Free Pascal is easy, but is platform-dependent. We discuss the process for each platform separately.

Installing under DOS or Windows

First, you must get the latest distribution files of Free Pascal. They come as zip files, which you must unzip first, or you can download the compiler as a series of separate files. This is especially useful if you have a slow connection, but it is also nice if you want to install only some parts of the compiler distribution. The distribution zip file contains an installation program INSTALL.EXE. You must run this program to install the compiler.

The screen of the installation program looks like figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1:

The DOS install program screen

Figure 2.2:

The program allows you to select:

What components you wish to install. e.g do you want the sources or not, do you want docs or not. Items that you didn’t download when downloading as separate files, will not be enabled, i.e. you can’t select them.
Where you want to install (the default location is C:\PP).

In order to run Free Pascal from any directory on your system, you must extend your path variable to contain the C:\PP\BIN directory. Usually this is done in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. It should look something like this :

   SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PP\BIN\GO32V2

for DOS or

   SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PP\BIN\WIN32

for WINDOWS and finally

   SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PP\BIN\OS2

for OS/2. (Again, assuming that you installed in the default location).

On OS/2, Free Pascal installs some libraries from the EMX package if they were not yet installed (the installer will notify you if they should be installed). They are located in the

 C:\PP\DLL

directory. The name of this directory should be added to the LIBPATH directive in the config.sys file:

 LIBPATH=XXX;C:\PP\DLL

Obviously, any existing directories in the LIBPATH directive (indicated by XXX in the above example) should be preserved.

Optional Installation: The coprocessor emulation

For people who have an older CPU type, without math coprocessor (i387) it is necessary to install a coprocessor emulation, since Free Pascal uses the coprocessor to do all floating point operations.

The installation of the coprocessor emulation is handled by the installation program (INSTALL.EXE) under DOS and WINDOWS.

Installing under Linux

Mandatory installation steps.

The LINUX distribution of Free Pascal comes in three forms:

a tar.gz version, also available as seperate files.
a .rpm (Red Hat Package Manager) version, and
a .deb (Debian) version.

All of these packages contain a ELF version of the compiler binaries and units. the older aout binaries are no longer distributed, although you still can use the comiler on an aout system if you recompile it.

If you use the .rpm format, installation is limited to

 rpm -i fpc-pascal-XXX.rpm

(XXX is the version number of the .rpm file)

If you use Debian, installation is limited to

 dpkg -i fpc-XXX.deb

Here again, XXX is the version number of the .deb file.

You need root access to install these packages. The .tar file allows you to do an installation if you don’t have root permissions.

When downloading the .tar file, or the separate files, installation is more interactive.

In case you downloaded the .tar file, you should first untar the file, in some directory where you have write permission, using the following command:

 tar -xvf fpc.tar

We supposed here that you downloaded the file fpc.tar somewhere from the Internet. (The real filename will have some version number in it, which we omit here for clarity.)

When the file is untarred, you will be left with more archive files, and an install program: an installation shell script.

If you downloaded the files as separate files, you should at least download the install.sh script, and the libraries (in libs.tar.gz).

To install Free Pascal, all that you need to do now is give the following command:

 ./install.sh

And then you must answer some questions. They’re very simple, they’re mainly concerned with 2 things :

Places where you can install different things.
Deciding if you want to install certain components (such as sources and demo programs).

The script will automatically detect which components are present and can be installed. It will only offer to install what has been found. because of this feature, you must keep the original names when downloading, since the script expects this.

If you run the installation script as the root user, you can just accept all installation defaults. If you don’t run as root, you must take care to supply the installation program with directory names where you have write permission, as it will attempt to create the directories you specify. In principle, you can install it wherever you want, though.

At the end of installation, the installation program will generate a configuration file (fpc.cfg) for the Free Pascal compiler which reflects the settings that you chose. It will install this file in the /etc directory or in your home directory (with name .fpc.cfg) if you do not have write permission in the /etc directory. It will make a copy in the directory where you installed the libraries.

The compiler will first look for a file .fpc.cfg in your home directory before looking in the /etc directory.

[next] [prev] [prev-tail] [front] [up]