Delphi uses Free Pascal for their iPad support

August 6, 2011

Finally there's some more news about the new Delphi version, which will be called Delphi XE2. As expected, there is no VCL support for OS/X. All existing applications have to be re-written using the new Firemonkey library. So Lazarus will remain the only VCL-compatible option to develop for OS/X.

But what really was a surprise, is to see that Embarcadero also supports Firemonkey on the iPad. But that means they need to have an ARM-compiler. This mystery was solved by a comment from Michael Swindel. Embarcadero will uses the Free Pascal compiler for it's iPad support.

Patches are welcome

This is very good news. It does show that even Embarcadero consider Free Pascal to be a mature, stable compiler. Above that due to Free Pascal's gpl-license they are not allowed to alter the compiler without publishing the source-code. So maybe we will see some Free Pascal patches send in by Embarcadero employees. They are really welcome!

1 comments:

• hsn, on 22 February, 2012 at 20:41 said:

  Good job Embarcadero. This may be a good strategy to revive the glory of Delphi. By some means they need to make Delphi more popular. It is sad when people praise .NET's RAD features which had been present in Delphi since mid 1990's. Most developers have not heard of Delphi and many who heard that name thinks that it is an interpreted language like Visual Basic. Embarcardero should promote Delphi as the only RAD for Win32 and should build some framework for Device Drivers also.

Post comment

Your email address will not be published. The required fields are marked by *