Why would a Delphi programmer use Lazarus as the IDE instead of using Delphi's IDE?
I've been very happy with the Delphi IDE for programming in Delphi.
But I've heard about the Lazarus 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. The Lazarus for Delphi Users section of the Lazarus Wiki 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 XDev Toolkit 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. Time = $).
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.
Answer
Ok. 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.