(Resending to gpc@gnu.de -- I noticed the original mail was sent to gpc-de@gnu.de and later resent to gpc@gnu.de, but my replay was only sent to gpc-de@gnu.de, wrongly.)
Andres K. Foerster wrote:
as I'm interrested in free software pascal compilers, I'd like to hear about your opinions about the others.
I don't want to start a flamewar - of course yours's the best! But what experiences do you have with the others?
I know Free Pascal very well. It comes with a lot of extensions, is fast and produces small binaries. But when you want to program for different platforms, you'll end up with lots of {$IfDef}s.
This is one of my main criticisms -- putting the burden of making the code portable on the programmer, rather than designing the system (as much as possible) portable by itself.
The other one is the omission of standard Pascal features. (I'm not so much opposed to extensions, IMHO omissions are much worse.) And from the discussions I've had/seen, this is not accidental, but fully intentional, as there seems to be some kind of hatred and ignorance against the standards among the developers. While actually many standard features would seem rather easy to add. A few, such as schemata, are probably not so easy, but actually those would provide some major benefits (in programming comfort/simplicity to the programmer), compared to the Borland "alternatives" (which can hardly be called so).
I had a look at p2cc, but it seems very weak, isn't it?
I've almost never used it, but I think so.
Frank