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.
v1.6.4 [Dec 23, 2015]
- Added TFlowPanel in ExtCtrls.pp
- The TreeNodes of TShellTreeView are now of type TShellTreeNode. In order to access the nodes as such, you need to explicitely cast the node to TShellTreeNode. The TShellTreeNode class provides the following functions and properties:
- ShortFilename: returns the filename without path.
- FullFilename: returns the fully qualified filename.
- IsDirectory: returns True if the node represents a directory.
- BasePath: returns the basepath of the node.
- Added 'iscancel' parameter to QuestionDlg. If no cancel button is explicitely set, mrCancel is returned in case the dialog is closed with ESC or system close button.
- Added support for TCustomEdit.TextHint.
- Added TTimeEdit in editbtn.pas.
Editor
- Basic multi-caret mode
- Option for multi-line notebook-tabs
- line-number part of gutter now allows to select the current line, or several lines.
Project
- Additions and Overrides are now added as last. Formerly they were added after the inherited and before the custom compiler options.
Messages Window
- The IDE now warns when there are duplicate units or include files in packages.
- Success line. New option to show compiler message "n lines compiled. m sec". Tools / Options / Messages Window / Show FPC message "lines compiled"
Desktops
- See Desktops
- Multi-monitor screen layouts are supported by the IDE.
IDE CoolBar and Editor Toolbar
- A new configurable IDE CoolBar replaces the static Toolbar. It shares settings GUI with EditorToolbar which was moved to IDE's codebase. The command set that can be selected was refined. Earlier only IDEMenuCommands could be selected, now a limited selection of all IDECommands.
- EditorToolbar package is empty and deprecated. It's functionality is now part of the IDE. Please uninstall it from the IDE because it will be removed from the 1.8 release.
Object Inspector
- The Boolean property editor now uses a CheckBox by default. A ComboBox with "False", "True" can still be selected in options.
Package editor
- Two separate buttons for adding files were replaced by one button with a dropdown menu. The "Add" and "Add more" buttons can be considered a failed experiment.
- Many usability issues were fixed. The whole tree is not updated any more after each operation and focus stays in right place after them.
Environment
- new Environment setting "Multiple Lazarus instances" to set up what happens if Lazarus is started with a file in command parameter.
lazbuild
- new option --verbose-pkgsearch to show what packages are searched and found.
lazarus
- new option --force-new-instance to force opening a new instance and ignoring the "Multiple Lazarus instances" option.
- Code navigation and completion for class helpers, record helpers and type helpers.
