Linux GUI Development: Lazarus 1.0 Review update

A while ago I wrote a review of Lazarus 0.9.30 and it came out with the 63% mainly because the installation process was so horrible. Well now it’s almost a year later and v1.0 has been released so it’s only fair I update my comments…

Installation

It’s still not exactly shiny but, and it’s a huge but, it is simple and it works! To install on Linux I had to download 3 .deb files (1 for Lazarus, 1 for the compiler, 1 for the source) and then I could install them by simply doing:

doing sudo dpkg -i *.deb

It’s worth tidying up any old Lazarus installs first which you can do by running my script here.

Downloading *.deb files and installing them is pretty normal for linux users so although it’s not a shiny wizard installer or single command it is simple and most importantly it just works! I’m going to upgrade this from 1/19 to 8/10

First Impressions

A lot of the little niggles have gone away and it’s a much more stable, solid feeling environment. It does still load up with a million windows (Delphi style) and feel a little old fashioned (a lack of wizzy GUI controls and UI customisation, single window mode etc.) but being open source and written in itself I can change these things if I want to reasonably easily. In fact loading up the AnchorDockingDesign package makes the IDE a docked single window affair and there’s plenty of 3rd part controls to download and play with.

Normal multi-window interface for Lazarus

Lazarus as a single window IDE

There’s still no multi-project support and recompiling the IDE to get a new component on the toolbar feels a bit weird even if it does work perfectly well. I’m going to stick with 6/10 for those reasons.

The GUI designer and Code Editor haven’t really changed since my last review and so they stay happily at 9/10.

Language features

The handling of generics has improved since I last looked at Lazarus and all seems to work pretty well now

Otherwise nothing much has changed, no  multicast events or garbage collection but those things don’t really slow me down much. That’s why I gave it 6/10.

Despite the lack of some of these things the language has always been and still is quite elegant (other than the nasty globabls), it’s got an excellent simple OO implementation and it’s really easy to quickly put an app together – oh yeah and it’s cross platform.

Cross-platform and backwards compatible

Lazarus works on windows, linux and mac. You can write a bit of code and natively compile it on each platform making for lightening fast code with no external dependencies. Write once, compile anywhere. You can already (partially) compile for android and other platforms are possible – anywhere the fpc compliler can be ported your code could work. That’s pretty impressive and it just works brilliantly.

Similarly all that ancient Delphi code can be loaded up edited and compiled and largely just works. Brilliant again. For that reason I’m going to bump up the language features to 8/10. (9 when android is working well).

I’ve not tried the feedback process again since v1 so I’m going to leave it at 7/10.

Conclusion

Despite it’s old fashioned feel in some places it’s simplicity is elegant and actually quite powerful. If you know the Object Pascal/Delphi language then it’s so fast to create good looking cross platform apps that it’ll knock your socks off.

When I pick up a new language I tend to do a challenge to load an xml file into a multi-column listview and create a details form to edit the selected row. In Java, something so apparently simple is a massive pain due to the imposition of the MVC pattern on everything. In C# it’s pretty easy, I can go MVC or not. In mono it’s reasonably easy too, although not the same easy and not as easy to get away from MVC.

In Lazarus it’s really easy, and it works fast and well on 3 major platforms. That’s a killer feature.

Category	Score
Installation	8/10
First Impressions	6/10
GUI Designer	9/10
Code Editor	9/10
Language Features	8/10
Feedback process	7/10
Cross-Platform	10/10
Overall	81% – Easy to use and powerful

In my previous review I said I couldn’t really recommend it, and that made me sad. Now I can recommend it, in fact it’s quickly becoming my technology of choice for linux gui development, because it’s quick to put things together and they look good. Just maybe Lazarus is living up to it’s vision and bringing Delphi back to life, but bigger and better than it was before!

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