[Mono-devel-list] Pascal compiler?

[marc hoffman]

Willibald, 

> But you have the command line preview... 

Yes.

> Why is it not in 
> mono cvs, if it's the standard Pascal compiler? Everything's 
> there, except some Pascal compiler.

Why would it be in the Mono cvs? Chrome is a closed-source commercial
product, it's not open source. I made that clear in my original post.

> Hmm, before starting coding a new compiler I want to hear 
> what Miguel says about all this. If it's true that Novell 
> already chose Chrome to be the standard Pascal compiler and 
> does support it with internal resources, 

Please do not read more into my words then i said.

> I think a new 
> compiler will be superfluent and will never have the official 
> blessing of Novell.

Letting alone any Open Source vs. Commercial debate, i think that in
general it's superfluous if 35 different groups reinvent the wheel
simultaneously, just for the sake of "doing it themselves". I honestly
believe that Chrome will bring a lot to the table for Mono Pascal
developers, and there's a lot to be gained by working together rather
then against or parallel each other, duplicating the effort.

As i said before we're open for input, feedback and assistance with
Chrome on /many/ levels, not necessarily restricted to pure testing and
feedback, and i'd be very interested in getting people involved in
actual coding tasks related to the project (although, one month before
release of our 1.0 version it's doubtful that it would make sense to
have someone new come in and - say - rewrite the core parser ;-). 

Stuff that needs work (and would directly benefit Mono in particular)
are things like integration with MonoDevelop (which we have planned but
currently don't have resources to spare on, as we do have a very small
team working on Chrome), which should be a very fun project for one or
two people that want to get involved with both Chrome and Mono (we've
got quite a bit architecture in place already from our VS integration
that could be leveraged, so this wouldn't be to extensive a project
either). 

Also interesting to do would be testing and prepping the compiler under
the "more exotic" platforms supported by mono (which, to me means
non-x86-Windows/Linux <g>)
 
> Honestly, this is really bad news, as mono will have some 
> open source VB and C# (maybe sometimes C) compiler, but a 
> closed source Pascal one. 

"Commercial" doesn't necessarily mean "bad". We're very dedicated to
Chrome, and i can promise you right here and now that Chrome will not
ever be a Kylix. I can also promise you that if for whatever reason
RemObjects would decide to discontinue Chrome (which i cannot anticipate
happening), chances are good that we would make it available on some
open source basis to ensure it continues to live (given there's
community interest). Not, as i said, that is see this happening; our
commitment to Chrome is very firm.

> I'm a burned child with closed 
> source Pascal compilers on Linux, so please forgive me that 
> I'm somewhat skeptical about yours. 

I understand that very well. But again we are not Borland, and Chrome is
not Kylix.

> Additionally you do not 
> seem to have any use for us other than forgetting about the 
> open source Delphi compiler and supporting your closed source 
> one without getting anything (some fun part - whatever) back. 

See my comment on that above. I don't think this is true, as we'd be
very happy to get people involved with the project with tasks that are
"fun" and go beyond testing and feedbacking (though they'd necessarily
/start/ with that) 

> Basically this would be another situation as the 
> Borland->Kylix 'community' is in now. A dead end: 

There's no such thing as 100% certainty, surely not in this industry and
not anywhere else in life. That said, i can guarantee you with 99%
certainty that this is /not/ going to happen with Chrome.

> And no one told the mono 
> community about it - or did you post any Chrome news on this 
> list over the last few months? I can not remember a single 
> post. If mono is that important for you, I guess you should 
> have -

See Todd's reply: we certainly have. Looking back thru my inbox, i
actually do see /you/ participating in discussion about Chrome, a
several months back ;-)


Let me close by saying that i think and hope that there's room here for
open source (Mono) and commercial (Chrome) software to co-exist and
support each other for mutual benefit - rather then working against each
other. 

It's not my place to judge the use of anyone's personal time, but given
the fact that we all have a limited amount of it, it would seem to me
it's much better spend working together rather then rewriting things yet
again, just for the sake of it.

But that's just MHO.

marc hoffman
Chief Architect, .NET
RemObjects Software
http://www.chromesville.com