Le Samedi 23 Novembre 2002 17:17, Frank Heckenbach a écrit :
There is a need if you do not want to restrict your C++ users to precompiled Pascal libraries. What if they want to change something in the VCL (or 3rd party) sources, to fix a bug, or for whatever other reason? This would be impossible if they couldn't then recompile the sources.
Then Borland should simply ship the Pascal compiler together with the C++ compiler. (That might be a question of licensing, but if the current C++ compiler can compile Pascal, every user of that compiler effectively has a Pascal compiler now, so it wouldn't make much of a difference.) I still hold that it's not necessary to mix the languages for any such reason. (And again, that's quite exactly what GNU does, so I think I have some experience in this area ...)
BTW, interesting that you bring up this point in this context. What if the users want to fix a bug in the compiler? Does Borland supply the source code of the compiler then?
In past times, Borland did supply the source code of the runtime library and the main units on request, for a symbolic price (but not the source of the compiler itself) . Borland has been sold three or for times since then, so it is not surprising that their policy is not the same now.