I’ve previously blogged on installing lazarus on ubuntu but unfortunately upgrading to ubuntu 11.10 broke my lazarus installation :( Here’s how I fixed it all.

1. Totally remove previous Lazarus and fpc installations

sudo apt-get purge lazarus*
sudo apt-get purge fpc*
sudo rm -Rf /usr/lib/fpc
sudo rm -Rf /usr/lib/lazarus
sudo rm -Rf /usr/share/fpcsrc
sudo rm -f ~/.fpc
sudo rm -Rf ~/.lazarus
sudo rm -f /usr/bin/lazarus*
sudo rm -f /usr/bin/lazres*
sudo rm -f /usr/bin/lazbuild*
sudo rm -f ~/.local/share/applications/lazarus*

2. Install fpc so you can use it from the command line

sudo apt-get install fp-compiler-2.4.4

You can see if this has worked properly by writing a hello world command line app, comiling it and running it before you’ve even tried to install lazarus. Save the following in a file called cmdline_helloworld.pas:

begin

writeln(‘hello world!’);

end.

Then compile using

fpc cmdline_helloworld.pas

and run using:

./cmdline_helloworld

Free Pascal Compiler use on the command line

3. Install lazarus

sudo apt-get install lazarus

You probably need to disable overlay scrollbars otherwise you can get problems using menus and dialogs in Lazarus and apps made with lazarus:

export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0

if you don’t want to make such a global change then just make a script to start lazarus like this:

#!/bin/sh
LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 lazarus-ide

4. Change IDE settings to make it easier to use with Unity

Unity is annoying for many reasons, but it doesn’t deal with multi-window apps like Lazarus very well. So here’s some suggestions to make it all behave a bit better.

First, if you use a taskbar plugin like tint you can have Lazarus only show one button rather than loads on the task bar (Environment -> Options -> Window and slect “Show single button in Taskbar” at the top.

Second, I recommend making lazarus use single window mode. This is a little experimental but I think it’s a major improvement over the old-fashioned pre-Delphi 2005 layout.

Normal layout:

Normal multi-window interface for Lazarus

To transform Lazarus into a single window mode application you need to install the AnchorDockingDsgn package which is helpfully installed with Lazarus. On ubuntu in a standard installation it’ll be in /usr/lib/lazarus/0.9.30/examples/anchordocking/design.

Do this as sudo otherwise the recompiling process doesn’t have enough rights to backup packages and wotnot. So start lazarus by doing

sudo lazarus-ide

In Lazarus File -> Open and browse to anchordockingdsgn.lpk

When the package editor comes up select the install button. Lazarus will ask for confirmation and tell you only static packages are supported so you need to rebuild lazarus (that really needs sorting out!), say yes and then sit back and enjoy the compilation process.

Next time you start Lazarus it’ll be in single window mode. For some reason the Object Inspector (F11) isn’t docked by default but you can easily add it yourself.

Lazarus as a single window IDE

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October 31, 2011

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