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Virtual Pascal

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 88.159.64.210 (talk) at 12:08, 29 April 2011 (Added in theory" to OWL. People keep coming to the forum asking OWL questions, but no regulars seem to use it, and it dies. BBS remark). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Virtual Pascal
Original author(s)Vitaly Miryanov
Developer(s)Allan Mertner
Stable release
2.1.279 / 2004-05-13
Written inObject Pascal and Assembler
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, OS/2, Linux
TypeCompiler, Integrated Development Environment
LicenseFreeware
Websitevpascal.com (archived), Online community

Virtual Pascal is a free 32-bit Pascal compiler, IDE and debugger for OS/2 and Microsoft Windows, with some limited Linux support. Although it had a wide user base in the late nineties, VP has not evolved significantly for several years, and the owner declared in 2005 that development had ceased[1]. Virtual Pascal was developed by Vitaly Miryanov and later maintained by Allan Mertner.

The compiler was quite popular in the BBS scene, probably because of its OS/2 port and being one of the few affordable multi-target compilers. Also Turbo Pascal had been popular in the BBS scene too, but its successor, Delphi was suddenly Windows only. Virtual Pascal provided a migration path for these existing codebases.

There has been pressure from some users for the compiler source to be made into open-source software. This has not been done, the main reasons being:

  • The compiler source is mostly written in Intel assembly and is complex and hard to maintain, adapt and stabilize after change.
  • Part of the run-time library is proprietary to Borland
  • Documentation and help is maintained with expensive proprietary tools
  • There is nobody who fully understands the code. Alan said that some of the deeper areas were no-touch for him (original code by Vitaly)

The compiler is compatible with Turbo Pascal, Borland Delphi and Free Pascal, although language- and RTL-compatibility is limited for features introduced after Delphi v2 and FPC 1.0.x. VP was primarily useful for the following purposes:

  • Easily port existing 16-bit Turbo Pascal programs to 32 bits
  • Port existing 16-bit OWL programs to 32-bit Windows (in theory)
  • Write console (text-mode) programs for several platforms
  • Pascal development using the 32-bit Windows API (the classic development, no COM!)
  • Learn object-oriented programming

Significant features of Virtual Pascal include:

  • Text-mode IDE
  • Debugger of VP is built directly into the IDE and is reminiscent of Turbo Debugger
  • Fast compilation
  • Tool-chain written mostly in Intel assembly

References

  1. ^ Virtual Pascal: News Mon 04 Apr 2005 - 01:21:43 - "Virtual Pascal has died" I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I am sad to report that Virtual Pascal has died a quiet death. It was born in 1995, and died in 2005 at the ripe old age (for software) of 10 years."

See also

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