I've been very happy with the Delphi IDE for programming in Delphi. But I've heard about the programming environment, and I've also heard that some Delphi programmers use it instead of the Delphi IDE.
What are the advantages that Lazarus has over the Delphi IDE, and why would, or should a Delphi programmer switch to it? The answers are leaving me with more questions than I had before. There seems to be some disagreement as to whether Lazarus can or cannot be used as an editor in developing Delphi code. I guess I thought you could leave everything in Delphi and just change IDEs.
Says: The first thing to do when converting a Delphi project Having opened Lazarus, you should go to to Tools and then Convert Delphi Project to Lazarus Project. This won't do everything for you, but nonetheless will take you a good deal of the way. Note that the Lazarus IDE's conversion tools are generally one-way conversions.
If you need to retain Delphi compatibility so you can compile your project with both Delphi and Lazarus, consider converting your files with the instead. Because Lazarus is free is not a reason to switch, but does not penalize you in physical $'s for switching. (You will still have to invest your time to convert and learn. My as-much-as-I-understand conclusions from your answers as to why someone might switch from Delphi to Lazarus: obviously it must be providing something that Delphi currently can't. Currently that is multiplatform support and possibly 64-bit support. Delphi did have Kylix at one time, but not Mac support. But with both of those and 64-bit promised soon by Embarcadero, you've answered my question by telling me there's no reason (at least for me) to switch.
In, we see other IDEs for writing Delphi code, including Emacs, Multi Edit, and EditPad Pro. If anyone uses those for Delphi, then there must be reasons. Microsoft software licentie powerpoint for mac.
I think this question asks why a Delphi user might choose Lazarus rather than of those other alternatives and rather than just continuing to use Delphi's own IDE. (Sure would be nice if Ikessler could back me up on that interpretation since so many others seem to think this is about ditching Delphi altogether in favor of Free Pascal.) – May 4 '10 at 22:31.
Well a Delphi programmer cannot use Lazarus to write Delphi code because Lazarus is not Delphi. Lazarus is actually an IDE and a bunch of Delphi-ish class libraries for Free Pascal. But note, things like Delphi's VCL is not there, and to be perfectly blunt the IDE and debugging experiences in Lazarus are pretty spotty, however it is free, so that counts for a lot. Bottom line, Delphi Lazarus. Use Delphi if you want a great IDE and debugger huge 3rd party support and tech suport you are targeting MS Windows, plus you are willing to pay for it. Use Lazarus (free pascal) if you want a Free IDE that supports multiple platforms and has a Delphi-ish syntax.
This answer makes little sense. What Borland (Codegear/Inprise) calles 'Delphi' code is what they used to call 'Object Pascal' code, which is what everyone else calls it anyway. Delphi is just an IDE just as Lazarus is. Either one can be used to write Object Pascal code.
More to the point, FreePascal even has a 'Delphi Compatibility Mode' that makes the language syntax and defaults more like Delphi. If you want to say 'Delphi is better supported because it's commercial', just say it. Both have features that the other does not, however. – Sep 3 '13 at 6:48.
This is an old thread, but could do with some updating. I stopped using Delphi, maybe a decade ago, largely because I had no choice.
Having spent 5+ years working as a Delphi coder, I was now a student again and the prices for Delphi were simply outrageous. The problem with Delphi was never Delphi. Delphi was a genius system, but Borland (and later its successors) completely misunderstood the changing computer world. Microsoft was able to deliver a programming environment, that you could download for free, and its.NET environment was comparable with the VCL in all the important ways, meanwhile even a basic version of Delphi would break your bank or be plain out unavailable to student budgets. The end result is that with no new Delphi programmers coming on-line, it became a risky proposition for businesses to continue to use. Finally with the rise of linux, Kylix turned out to be a total trainwreck of an environment, not utilizing available UI toolchains and with a suspicious stench of Wine pervading it, topped off with an insulting attitude to GPL software that treated it as if it was shareware.
Finally when Turbo Delphi came out many years later, it was unable to utilize the amazing resources available via sites like tories component sites. It was clear Borland had no respect at all for its coder ecosystem.
So Lazarus seemed to emerge out of all this, taking a very long time to gestate and seemingly aiming at some sort of analogue to Delphi 4, held by many to be one of the cleanest and neatest in the Delphi line. It complied to just about everything, its implementation of Object Pascal was spot-on, and most importantly it was free in all the senses that matter to open source.
However, it has had a long history of bugginess, and incomplete implementations of its controls. And this was bit of a deal breaker for me and many others.
With that said, I recently decided to download it, out of curiosity, and found that it's actually come a hell of a long way. The database components just work, although you might need to follow a few tutorials and chase some leads around to get them all up and running, and serious progress has been made towards iPhone and Android build targets. I'm not sure I'm ready to deploy this to any of my commercial clients yet, but I'm going to give it another run with a personal project to put it through its paces, and if it does work, I think I'm finally going to be re-united with my first programming love, Pascal, and in a matter that lets me use my Mac to do the heavy lifting, whilst providing Windows and Linux builds. So basically here are the facts on the comparison;- Lazarus and Delphi are totally separate entities. Lazarus is NOT a cross compiler for Delphi, but has a certain degree of compatibility. Its more like GCC vs MS C. Delphi is more polished and likely more stable.
Lazarus provides a Delphi 4 like environment that old-hand Delphi coders will find very comfortable. But Lazarus can be temperamental at times, and Delphi programmers need to understand that not everything in the latest and greatest Delphis will be there for them. Delphi does Windows, and it does it very well (yes I know the new one has some cross compilation targets, but word on the street is, that it's a bit hacky and needs some time in the embacardo cooker before it's really there), whilst Lazarus complies to almost everything.
The current target list is;- Darwin, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Win32, Win64, WinCE go32v2 (I think that's MS-DOS with 32bit extensions!), OS2, Netware(!), BEOS, Haiku(?!), QNX, wdosx(?), emx, netwlibc, Atari, Amiga, Palm-os, Gameboy advance, nds, MacOS, Morphos, Plus, there's experimental support for IOS and Android. On top of this, the thing can use widget sets from QT, GTK, GTK2, Win32/WIn64, Carbon, fpGUI(no idea), Cocoa or no GUI at all, with various degrees of implementation transparency.
Its an exhaustive list! So Caveat Emptor. I strongly recommend Delphi coders download this and do some personal projects to get a feel for it, not on the boss' dime, but there's a lot of depth and substance to Lazarus, and it's potentially a vital tool in the belt for dealing with life outside the Windows crib. Plus since Delphi's new masters still haven't learned a!@#$%^&.
thing about why Delphi fell from grace (Hint, make it affordable or free to hobbyists and students to learn and create custom components), it's really the only budget option available. If Embarcadero ever wake up, maybe that will change. Until then, viva Lazarus. Maybe I'm just reading this wrong, but you seem to be under the impression that the IDEs are somehow interchangeable. That's not correct.
Lazarus is built on top of the FPC compiler and is tied to it in much the same way that Delphi is tied to the DCC compiler. Also, they use different form description file formats. Delphi can't read LFMs, and Lazarus can try to read DFMs but it doesn't do a particularly good job of it. FPC/Lazarus is very similar to Delphi, but it's a different dialect of Object Pascal and it would be a mistake to think they're equivalent. Yes, the Lazarus IDE is much freakin' smarter than the Delphi IDE.
When you paste a bunch of code, it correctly indents it. It can code-compete method overrides, when changing a function prototype and ctrl-shift-up/down jumping to the implementation, the cursor is AT the place where you need to fix it, and it even code-completes the change for you as well! It's an enormous time-saver, provided you know your keyboard shortcuts.
Seeing how it should be done makes me wonder why Delphi isn't like that by now. Unfortunately for Embarcadero, Lazarus/FPC will crush them. They can't catch up anymore.
– Aug 22 '13 at 2:46. I'd like to add that the question is specifically about the IDE, and that this wasn't substantially addressed. That said, I want to reiterate: Delphi is a dying breed not just because of the expense, but because FPC is available everywhere. Also, the open nature provides opportunities for anyone to fix nagging issues, like the code-completion enhancements found in the Laz IDE. Note that this is extremely important.
A great part of the code is humdrum stuff, like repeating function signatures in interface and implementation. This should be a total breeze and in Lazarus it very much is. – Aug 22 '13 at 2:50. I don't have that much new to add, but I thought I'd relate my crossplatform experience. As far as putting together a cross platform application sketch fairly quickly, I find Lazarus to work very nicely. I've recently been using MonoDevelop of which there is much to commend, but the gui designer stetic doesn't seem as complete as the Lazarus GUI designer. Or is it the toolkit (GTK#) that seems to lack some bits?
Before that, I've used Qt / C which also seemed to work out fairly well for crossplatform development, but I'm not real keen on C, and Qt's signal/slot framework is a bit curious, but works well once you get your head wrapped around it. In sum, I find RAD work, and coding using Lazarus to be mostly joyful, besides, what a cool name for an IDE!
I used to use Lazarus to save form content (e.g., when a poorly designed site's page validation flushes all the content after finding something to nitpick). After upgrading to Mavericks a few weeks ago, I noticed that Lazarus was no longer working. The developers site ( ) is still active (though the 'contact us' form fails to accept any submissions), but there doesn't appear to have been an update to the extension for over a year. Is there any other extension/trick for saving Safari form content (and repopulating it when returning to a form/field)?
I think you are confused, or aren't reading as carefully as I am. Please scroll up and review this thread in its entirety before further embarrassing yourself. #1) jhfrontz started a thread titled 'Is there a replacement for Lazarus (form recovery extension for Safari)?'
#2) I replied to his question appropriately. #3) You then came along, 10 months later, and posted, 'I already knew that, and that doesn't answer my question, I'm looking for a way to download the file, and the alternative you posted isn't good enough.' T his was your first reply to the thread. You hadn't asked any earlier question. You were hijacking someone else's thread.
Unless you, 1AI, are jhfrontz, your replies and request here are making very little sense. (And even if you are the same person, and failed to mention this, your replies aren't make sense, AND you're being impolite.) I'll conclude with these points: #1) I do have the Lazarus Form Recovery extension. It no longer works and hasn't worked for a very long time. You won't be able to make it work, unless you're stll using OS X 10.8. It broke with 10.9 (Mavericks,) which came out in October of 2013. #2) I'm not sending the lfr.safarietz file to you.
I might consider it, if you'd apologize. #3) The userscript 'Textarea Backup with expiry' that I posted above does work just as well, if not better, than Lazarus did, with the latest version of Safari. Why do I suspect you haven't even tried it? Start another thread for your inevitably-fruitless pursuit, perhaps? And please read carefully yourself, before criticizing people who are taking the time to help you.
Lazarus Alternatives For Mac Os X
Good luck to you and happy New Year. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums. Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site.
Lazarus Alternatives For Mac Os
All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.