News
  • To do: bring back forums using SQL database. PasForum was paused and temporarily closed due to problems with maintaining the sessions and SDS text files. The forum will be brought back with an sql database soon.
  • Many assumed that since Powtils development pauses during some months, development must have permanently stopped. False assumptions, rumors, and speculations go wild. Assumer and speculator do not a good programmer make. Knowledge and fact do not come from random wagging salivated tongues.
  • after working on these utilties for years, more bugs and errors have shown up in the FPC rtl, fpc compiler, unit finalization/initialization, threads, sockets units, and system runtime. It seems like an impossible task to fix them all from our end. What can we do?
  • Go back to basics. Powtils 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 will now avoid using FPC features that do not work properly. It would seem obvious to do this. However for many years we did not know which features of the compiler actually worked properly! Sad but true.
  • Powtils will avoid using a compiler feature until it is stable. Several unstable alpha-like compiler features have been found.
  • Automatic unit finalization and initialization, as an example, will be avoided where possible since it it causes so many problems. This is a feature Pascal has had since Turbo Pascal days, and yet it still doesn't work properly in FPC, nor in DLL's either. Since it is such an old language feature, we thought it would be stable decades later. However it is not, so manual style init procedures may need to be used in each web program, as it was in version 1.3.x (WebInit, WebFini, or similar)
  • Plug ins will also be installed manually rather than being hidden in a separate init/fini unit. Again this avoids problems due to fpc unit initialization/finalization bugs.
  • Threads will have to be avoided for now in all examples and fpc based web servers, since threads have proven to be buggy.
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