Lazarus is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Free Pascal programming language.
This IDE provides a great tool for Free Pascal programming. It's similar to Delphi IDE when Borland was in charge of it. It’s a Multilanguage program and it allows establishing the interface language since the installation process. It uses Free Pascal and it provides the possibility to import Delphi files, like units, projects and packages.
This IDE is sorted and distributed in windows, allowing to have as many windows opened as it needs according to the project/code.
If you like code blocks, you can take advantage of code templates to allow checking or reviewing code syntaxes, structures and definitions of the Free Pascal language. Moreover, you can grab several packages from the developer's site and forum.
As any good IDE it provides object inspector, source editor, watch window, Code Explorer, Code Browser, ToDo List, and many others helpful tools that makes easier the programming task and the details code control. Its environment, Editor, Codetools and Debugger are fully customizable.
v1.2.6 [Nov 16, 2013]
1. Editor
- Macro Recorder/Player
- Multiple macros. Ability to select/change macro from list.
- Individual key-shortcuts for each Macro
- Macros can be saved per project or with the global IDE config
- Package EditorMacroScripting: Allow use of PascalScript in macros.
- Sticky selection mode
- Select text word-wise
- Highlight different (user specified) words in different colors See here
- Auto-continue for comments and strings
- Inactive code in $IFDEF can be "low-lighted" (greyed out)
- Markup/Highlight colors can be merged (alpha channel) and prioritised.
- Added Popup menu / Source / Find references of used unit: Position cursor on a uses clause will find all references of this used unit within the active unit.
2. Debugger
- Watches window: added detail view, for selected watch
- Debug Inspector: Ability to directly input expression to monitor
- Attach and Detach
- Support for remote debug with gdbserver
- When option "open last project" is enabled (default) and the IDE was closed with no project, no project will open at start. When a virtual (not saved) project was open a new Application project is created.
- The Package Graph now uses the new TLvlGraphControl, showing all package dependencies including project and IDE.
- Package Editor: menu item to find and remove unneeded dependencies
3. IDEIntf
- Added boolean parameter BringToFront (defaults to false) to TLazIDEInterface.DoShowSearchResultsView. It specifies whether Search Results dialog should be shown on top or under Source Editor. Behavior of existing code calling this method is not affected.
- Added TPropertyEditor.GetVerbCount, GetVerb, PrepareItem, ExecuteVerb to let TPropertyEditors add menu items to the Object Inspector.
4. Compiler options
- Build modes are not visible by default. They can be enabled with a checkbox.
- The GUI is visually above the options GUI pages, thus indicating it has effect on them.
- There is a separate window for managing the modes. Two useful modes, "Debug" and "Release", can be created with a single click.
- Options are read and parsed directly from FPC.
- The "Other" page has a button which opens the generated GUI. The options are synchronized and saved with the custom options memo.
- There is another button for selecting DEFINEs. All added DEFINEs are stored in project options, the selected ones are put to custom options.
- Options in other pages have been rearranged
- Append FPC options to packages without touching the lpk
- Changing the output directory of packages without touching the lpk
- Define IDE macros only for some packages or only for the project
- Append compiler options for all projects with build mode "debug"
- Change the package(s) output directory of all projects and packages with build mode "release"
- Append compiler options of third party projects and packages without altering their sources
- The page Inherited was moved to the Show options dialog.
- The window Unit Dependencies was rewritten.
5. Designer
- Designer popup menu item Reset for setting control bounds to their ancestor bounds
- Add Frame onto a form: The dialog to select the frame ancestor now scans all sources.
- The default test directory of the IDE under Linux was changed from /tmp to ~/tmp to avoid clashes with other users
- Delphi converter is more robust and does not abort any more for parsing or other errors. - The conversions are still primitive but they are done better.
