Pascaline¶
Pascaline is an Eclipse plug-in aimed at programming in the Pascal language. Don't expect lots of features as in a profesional IDE, because it is focused mainly on education. Pascaline has been used to teach programming since 2007 to more than 1,000 students.
Pascaline is based on Eclipse and CDT. As an Eclipse plug-in it is integrated quite well within this profesional IDE. As a CDT extension, it provides several powerful features, such as debugging Pascal programs.
Pascaline uses the FreePascal compiler, which provides support for different Pascal flavours. However, only two of them are currently supported by Pascaline: Object Pascal and FreePascal. This is due to the fact that the main development is focused on learning programming. Does it mean that other flavours (like Delphi) would never be supported? Well, we hope they will ever be supported, but nowadays, the Pascaline development team is too small to focus on other flavours. In other words: would you like to collaborate? Post a message in the developers forum.
Screenshots¶
Installation¶
The easiest way of starting to use Pascaline is to download EclipseGavab. Usually, once a new version of Pascaline is released, a new version of EclipseGavab including it is developed.
On the other edge, you can also compile it from source.
However, if you look for something in the middle, that is, you have your own Eclipse installation with the set of tools that suits your needs, you can install Pascaline from the Pascaline Releases repository (http://downloads.sidelab.es/pascaline/releases/galileo/). Latest versions are made available through the snapshots repository: http://downloads.sidelab.es/pascaline/snapshots/galileo/.
Note that, in the later two cases (if you use Pascaline out of EclipseGavab) you will need to install CDT (C/C++ Development Tools). This is automatically suggested by Galileo, but must be manually added in prior versions. Pascaline versions prior to 1.0, need CDT 5.0.2. This is a nightly-build release because there are some important bugs in versions 5.0.0 and 5.0.1. Pascaline 1.0 needs CDT 6.0 (which is available through the Galileo repository).
Requirements¶
Pascaline is based on the FreePascal compiler. Installation of external tools required by Pascaline depends on the operating system.
Linux¶
For Linux distributions the following packages must be installed (usually available from the package manager provided by your linux distribution):
build-essential(needed by CDT)fp-compiler, fp-units-base, fp-units-rtl(needed by Pascaline)
Windows¶
Under Windows, you also need FreePascal and MinGW installed in the same directory as eclipse. You should end up with this directory structure:
parent_dir eclipse mingw msys fpc
MinGW must include the GNU Source Level Debugger. It can be found here. Just install it in the mingw directory.
Note that due to several issues related to gdb and Windows processes that are not under our control, the program being debugged (the debuggee) is executed in an external Windows terminal.
Documentation¶
The code is the main and most accurate documentation available. You can download it from http://code.sidelab.es/svn/pascaline/ide, or browse it online at https://code.sidelab.es/projects/pascaline/repository.
You may also want to take a look at the development page.
Development¶
Latest development versions can be found on the Pascaline Snapshots repository (http://downloads.sidelab.es/pascaline/snapshots/galileo/).
Compiling from sources¶
Source code repository is available at http://code.sidelab.es/svn/pascaline/ide/. Pascaline is based on Maven, and it can be built by issuing
mvn clean package
from the es.sidelab.pascaline.parent project. All the plugins should compile without errors, and a p2 repository is generated at es.sidelab.pascaline-site/target. Pascaline can be installed from this p2 site (by pointing Eclipse > Install New Software to this location).
Pascaline uses a wrapper of the Free Pascal Compiler that can be found at http://code.sidelab.es/svn/pascaline/fpc-wrapper. A jar library providing the wrapper is included in the es.sidelab.pascaline.managedbuilder.core/metafpc folder.
Contributions¶
The development page of the project contains useful information about things learnt during the development of Pascaline. It also points out things that remain pending and future developments. If you plan to contribute to this project, or modify it in any way, it is a must-see.
