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GPC 2.1 News

There's a number of new or changed features which are listed in the following sections. Features without further description refer to new routines or options.

Information about GPC as well as GPC itself for download can be found on the GPC home page.

This list is part of GNU Pascal. Copyright (C) 1997-2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

• News - General Changes And Possible Incompatibilies with Previous Versions:
• News - Command Line Options and Compiler Directives:
• News - Compiler and RTS Built-in Declarations:
• News - Units:
• News - GPC Manual:
• News - Demo Programs:
• News - Utilities:
• News - Test Suite:
• Legend:

General Changes And Possible Incompatibilies with Previous Versions

This release of GPC has been cleaned up substantially. Consequently, a few old and obsolete features have been dropped or replaced by cleaner, more flexible or otherwise more useful ones. This might lead to minor problems with old programs, but we suppose they're very rare (many programmers might not even know about the old features) and easy to overcome. The most important ones are listed here, the rest of them is contained in the following sections and marked with (@).

• The executables bpc, pc and epc as well as the dialect specific behaviour if GPC is invoked by those names have been dropped. What they did was equivalent to gpc --borland-pascal, gpc --classic-pascal or gpc --extended-pascal, respectively, and you can use these forms now. If you need them often, you can put them in scripts or aliases called bpc etc., of course.
• asmname in variable and constant declarations must now come after the type (e.g. var foo: Integer = 42; asmname 'bar';). Furthermore, asmname doesn't imply external anymore for variables.
• The internal file handling in the RTS was changed from using FILE * pointers to integer file handles, to make it more efficient and to get rid of some problems. Accordingly, the CFile field in BindingType was replaced by a Handle field, the AssignCFile procedure by an AssignHandle procedure, and the GetFile function was removed (a substitute is the function FileHandle which has already existed in previous releases).
• The option --no-nested-comments (to allow comments like { *) as the standard requires) has been renamed to --mixed-comments (note the inverted value). Accordingly, the compiler directives {$N+} and {$N-} have been renamed to {$no-mixed-comments} and {$mixed-comments}. The default, when no dialect options are given, is still --no-mixed-comments (i.e., what used to be --nested-comments).
• A new option --nested-comments to allow real nested comments like { { } } (also available as a compiler switch, like almost all command-line options). Note the new meaning of this switch, so if you used it before, you'll probably have to change it to --no-mixed-comments (see above). If nested comments are enabled, comments are also allowed within compiler directives and macros - however, compiler directives within other compiler directives are still not allowed, and compiler directives within comments are, of course, still ignored.
• C style character escapes (\n, \007 etc.) are now the default for strings enclosed in double quotes, while single quoted strings do not allow them (according to the standard). Accordingly, a verbatim " in a double quoted string is now obtained with \" rather than "" (but a verbatim ' in a single quoted string still with '', of course). Therefore, the option --[no-]char-escapes and the compiler directives {$E+}/{$E-} have been dropped. If you used these features, please change to the appropriate kind of quotes.
• Macros are no more expanded in --borland-pascal and --delphi modes. Expanding them causes a few problems with strange sources written for BP which use the same name for a conditional define and an identifier. Macros can be turned on/off, independently of the dialect, with the new switches --[no-]macros. (B)
• Macros and conditionals defined with {$define} are now case-insensitive. (B) Macros and conditionals defined with --define on the command line are still case-sensitive for compatibility to other GNU compilers. In addition, GPC provides {$csdefine} or --csdefine and {$cidefine} or --cidefine to define case sensitive or insensitive macros or conditionals, respectively. If you have defined macros or conditionals with {$define} and rely on them being case-sensitive, change it to {$csdefine} now.
• The mechanism for including GPC code into code written in other languages has changed and is now more robust. A header gpc-in-c.h is provided for inclusion of GPC code into C programs, and a demo program GPC_C_Pas (together with C code calling it) is supplied to demonstrate this. (Including C code into GPC programs works as before.)
• The preprocessor is now called gpcpp (it was gpc-cpp before). If you have installed an older GPC version, please remove gpc-cpp now. If you have any scripts that refer to gpc-cpp directly, change the reference to gpcpp. If you use DJGPP, and you added the GPC specific sections to djgpp.env as described in the FAQ, please change [gpc-cpp] to [gpcpp].
• In --borland-pascal mode, GPC now ignores everything after end.. (This also takes care of "^Z" characters at the end of Dos text files). In particular, multiple units or modules in one file don't work anymore in --borland-pascal mode. (B)
• GPC has introduced a few new keywords which may break programs that use those names as identifiers. Most of them are only "conditionally reserved", i.e. they act as keywords only in those situations where the keyword makes sense, and can be used as identifiers elsewhere. While this does not eliminate all possible conflicts, it avoids a number of them. Among the new keywords are attribute, class and published. (D, partly)

Command Line Options and Compiler Directives

• -x Pascal/--language=Pascal works now; new option -x Preprocessed-Pascal/--language=Preprocessed-Pascal to compile without preprocessing
• {$ifopt} works now, with short directives like in BP ({$ifopt X+}) (B) and also with long directives ({$ifopt extended-syntax})
• Local compiler directives and defines can be specified with {$local} and {$endlocal}.
• Delphi (or C++) style // comments in default and --delphi modes, and a switch --[no-]delphi-comments to turn them on/off explicitly. (D)
• -W[no-]implicit-abstract (warn if an object type not declared abstract contains an abstract method)
• -W[no-]inherited-abstract (warn if an abstract object type inherits from a non-abstract one)
• -W[no-]typed-const (warn about BP style misuse of typed constants)
• -W[no-]near-far (warn about use of the obsolete BP compatible near and far directives)
• -W[no-]underscore (warn about double/leading/trailing underscores in identifiers)
• -W[no-]mixed-comments (warn about use of mixed comments)
• -W[no-]nested-comments (warn about use of nested comments)
• -W[no-]semicolon (warn about a semicolon after then, else or do)
• -W[no-]field-name-problem (don't warn about a problem with field names)
• -W[no-]object-directives (don't warn about unimplemented private, protected and public directives)
• -W[no-]warnings (enable/disable warnings)
• All -Wfoo warning options also work as {$W foo} compiler directives. In contrast to the last alpha release, there must now be a space after the W. (@)
• --no-default-paths (disable standard unit etc. paths)
• --no-unit-path, --no-object-path (disable any unit/object paths given so far)
• --[no-]read-base-specifier (in read statements, allow non-decimal input with n#)
• --[no-]read-hex (in read statements, allow hexadecimal input with $)
• --[no-]read-white-space (in read statements, require whitespace after numbers)
• --[no-]io-checking (same as {$I+}, {$I-})
• --[no-]double-quoted-strings
• --[no-]stack-checking, also as compiler directives {$[no-]stack-checking} or {$S+}/{$S-} (B)
• --[no-]typed-address, also as compiler directives {$[no-]typed-address} or {$T+}/{$T-} (B)
• --[no-]transparent-file-names (derive the external file names from the file variable names
• --[no-]progress-messages, --[no-]progress-bar (output information to give progress messages or display a progress bar while compiling, using suitable utilities)
• --init-modules=foo:bar (initialize the named modules in addition to those imported regularly; kind of a kludge)
• {$[no-]debug-statement[=foo]} (call a procedure automatically before each statement for debugging)
• --big-endian, --little-endian, --print-needed-options for targets whose endianness can vary
• The --[no-]c-numbers switch has been removed. If you really used C style octal or hex numbers (0400, 0xf00), you can easily convert them to the Extended Pascal notation (8#400, 16#f00) or (hex only) to the Borland Pascal notation ($foo). (@)
• {$gnu-pascal} is now completely equivalent to --gnu-pascal; {$gnu-pascal} has been added to all units shipped with GPC, so they can also be compiled when --borland-pascal or other dialect options are given on the command line.
• {$if} directives now understand Pascal operators like and, or, not (C operators are also still understood).
• {$P+}/{$P-} was replaced by {$[no-]pedantic} (or --[no-]pedantic on the command line)
• The single-letter compiler directives are now BP compatible. Those that are not meaningful or not necessary in GPC (e.g. {$F+}, {$O...}, or {$M} with only numbers following) are ignored in --borland-pascal mode and warned about otherwise. (B) Note: {$W+}/{$W-} is now also ignored in --borland-pascal mode (it is the only single-letter directive left that has a different meaning in BP and in GPC, and besides, the BP meaning can be safely ignored in GPC). To enable/disable warnings in --borland-pascal mode, you can use {$W [no-]warnings} now. (@)
• The RTS command line options are now also available as long options; new RTS options --version (print RTS version and exit), --abort-on-error (abort with SIGABRT on runtime error), --error-file, --error-fd (dump runtime error messages and strack trace to given file name or FD).
• RTS command line options are now recognized after --gpc-rts instead of -Grts. Also, a single option can be given with --gpc-rts=option. This is allowed multiple times. (@)
• The items of --field-widths are now delimited by `:' rather than `,' so they can be distinguished from the `,' used to delimit several compiler options. (@)
• Files with .pp or .dpr extension are recognized as Pascal sources. (D)
• New options --classic-pascal and --classic-pascal-level-1 (equivalent to --standard-pascal and --standard-pascal-level-1, and meaning to supersede the latter in the future)
• New predefined symbol __GPC_VERSION__

Compiler and RTS Built-in Declarations

• Syntax:
  • New operators is and as for objects
  • shl and shr can also be used as procedures now.
  • mod with negative right operand now works like in BP. (B)
  • Expressions like -2 * +3 are now allowed without parentheses. (B)
  • The alternative address operator & was removed. (@ is still there.) (@)
  • register directive
  • asmname and uses ... in now allow concatenated strings
  • asmname for programs, units and module interfaces
  • Directives with double underscores like __asmname__, __inline__ have been dropped. The same directives without underscores have been available for a long time. Furthermore, GPC now supports ^const to create a pointer to a constant (which could be done in a C like fashion with the __const__ directive before). (@)
• Types:
  • Abstract methods and object types
  • PObjectType with fields Size, NegatedSize, Parent and Name, returned by TypeOf and required by SetType
  • ByteBool, ShortBool, WordBool, MedBool, LongBool, LongestBool, Boolean(42) (D?)
  • Type qualifiers like __byte__ or __unsigned__ have been dropped. GPC has been supporting "real" type names like Byte or ByteWord for a long time, and it's easy to change to them. Similar for __cstring__ and __void__ where CString and Void are available. (@)
  • nil is accepted as a value of any procedural/functional type (B)

Some of the following declarations are built into the compiler, others are declared in the GPC module.

• Files and I/O:
  • SeekEOF, SeekEOLn (B)
  • IOErrorFile
  • New parameter ElementSize to ReverseBytes, ConvertFromLittleEndian, ConvertFromBigEndian, ConvertToLittleEndian, ConvertToBigEndian, BlockReadLittleEndian, BlockReadBigEndian, BlockWriteLittleEndian, BlockWriteBigEndian (@)
  • ReadStringLittleEndian
  • ReadStringBigEndian
  • WriteStringLittleEndian
  • WriteStringBigEndian
  • GetTempFileNameInDirectory
  • PathExists
  • DataDirectoryName
  • AssignBinary
  • HasWildCardsOrBraces
  • BraceExpand
  • MultiFileNameMatch
  • GlobOn
  • MultiGlob
  • MultiGlobOn
  • QuoteFileName
  • UnQuoteFileName
  • ReadLink
  • FExpandQuoted
  • ForceAddDirSeparator
  • FindNonQuotedChar
  • FindNonQuotedStr
  • NameExtFromPath
  • SystemInfo
  • GetMountPoint
  • FileMove
  • ChMod
  • ChOwn
  • IOSelect
  • IOSelectRead
  • FileNameLoCase
  • FileNamesCaseSensitive (constant)
  • DirRoot (constant)
  • MaskNoStdDir (constant)
  • QuotingCharacter (constant)
  • EnvVarChars (constant)
  • EnvVarCharsFirst (constant)
  • WildCardChars (constant)
  • FileNameSpecialChars (constant)
  • ShellExecCommand (constant)
  • DataReady renamed to CanRead (@)
  • FileLock, FileUnlock
  • MemoryMap, MemoryUnMap
  • RuntimeErrorErrNo
  • InOutResCErrorString
  • CStringStrError
  • StatFS is now a function rather than a procedure. (@)
  • InOutResStr was renamed to InOutResString, is now a PString rather than a CString, and is now in the GPC module rather than built into the compiler. (@)
  • New parameter ErrNoFlag to IOError, IOErrorInteger, IOErrorCString and IOErrorFile (@)
  • New parameter Quoted to RelativePath (@)
  • New parameter Prefix to ConfigFileName (@)
  • New parameter AccessTime to SetFileName (@)
  • ExpandEnvironment recognizes ~user
  • Each of the parameters Dir, Name and Ext to FSplit may now be Null.
  • New fields User, Group, Mode, Device, INode, Links, SymLink, TextBinary and Special, CloseFlag in BindingType
  • The variable TextFilesBinary has been dropped. Instead, you can now use the procedure AssignBinary or the field TextBinary in BindingType. (@)
  • File sizes can now be bigger than Integer (e.g. 64 bit files on 32 bit machines) if supported by the OS via lseek64() or llseek() (e.g. Linux, Solaris, IRIX).
  • Renamed the file mode constants from fmfoo to fm_foo. (@)
  • GetIOErrorMessage now returns a string rather than a CString. (@)
  • In GlobBuffer, the fields Count and Result (pointer to an array of CStrings, 0 baser) were replaced by Result, a pointer to an array of pointers to strings, 1 based). (@)
• Strings:
  • FormatString
  • FormatStringTransformPtr
  • Integer2String
  • IsUpCase
  • IsLoCase
  • IsAlpha
  • IsAlphaNum
  • IsAlphaNumUnderscore
  • IsSpace
  • IsPrintable
  • Renamed the CString routines in the RTS so they get a CString prefix, moved the BP compatibility identifiers for the same routines into the Strings unit (B) (@)
  • MemCompCase
  • StrEqualCase
  • PosCase
  • LastPosCase
  • PosFromCase
  • LastPosTillCase
  • IsPrefixCase
  • IsSuffixCase
  • LTrim (VS/Pascal compatibility :-)
  • LineBreak (constant)
  • SetEnv (makes obsolete libc's PutEnv (@))
  • UnSetEnv
  • GetCEnvironment
  • DisposePPStrings
  • SetLength does not require extended syntax anymore.
  • The environment variable management is now implemented in Pascal, so it's independent of libc differences (e.g. the presence or not of environ). Access via GetEnv etc. works unchanged.
  • The Environment variable is now a schema which contains the environment variables as CStrings. (@)
  • Empty and case-sensitive environment variables are allowed within GPC programs even under Dos.
• Random:
  • SeedRandom
  • SeedRandomPtr (variable)
  • Randomize is called automatically when necessary (except when using the BP compatible random number generator in the System unit (B)).
• Memory:
  • ReAlloc; previous ReAlloc function (libc) renamed to CReAlloc (@)
  • ReAllocPtr (variable)
  • ForEachMarkedBlock
  • AllocateBigMem, DisposeBigMem, MoveToBigMem, MoveFromBigMem, MapBigMem for uniform access to big memory blocks for GPC and BP (B)
• Time:
  • Sleep
  • SleepMicroSeconds
  • Alarm
  • GetCPUTime
  • GetMicroSecondTime
  • GetDayOfWeek
  • GetDayOfYear
  • GetSundayWeekOfYear
  • GetMondayWeekOfYear
  • GetISOWeekOfYear
  • FormatTime
  • The constant MonthLength was replaced by a function of the same name that handles leap years. (@)
  • DayOfWeekName (constant)
  • InvalidYear (constant)
  • New parameters TimeZone, DST, TZName1, TZName2 to UnixTimeToTime (@)
  • New fields TimeZone, DST, TZName1, TZName2 in TimeStamp
• Misc:
  • Include and Exclude for sets (B)
  • InitProc (D)
  • Initialize (D)
  • Finalize (D)
  • IsInfinity
  • IsNotANumber
  • SplitReal
  • Ln1Plus
  • ReturnAddress
  • FrameAddress
  • Runtime errors are now printed with their address to help debugging (using addr2line), and the address is stored in ErrorAddr. (B)
  • RegisterRestoreTerminal
  • UnregisterRestoreTerminal
  • RestoreTerminal
  • ExecuteNoTerminal
  • SetProcessGroup
  • SetTerminalProcessGroup
  • GetTerminalProcessGroup
  • IsTerminal
  • GetTerminalName
  • SetInputSignals
  • GetInputSignals
  • GetShellPath
  • GetPasswordEntryByName
  • GetPasswordEntryByUID
  • GetPasswordEntries
  • StrSignal
  • Kill
  • WaitPID
  • InstallSignalHandler
  • BlockSignal
  • SignalBlocked
  • Constants for the signals
  • UserID
  • GroupID
  • IllReservedAddress, IllPriviledgedInstruction, IllReservedOp were removed. (@)

GPC Units

• Compiler features related to units:
  • uses and import may now occur multiple times in a program, unit/module interface or unit/module implementation, even between declarations.
  • gpc-main settings are now possible in units
  • public and private directives for interfaces
• CRT:
  • Works now under Cygwin and mingw.
  • DJGPP: support for 40 column modes (requires updated PDCurses library)
  • Renamed the the conditional to get an X11 version from XCURSES to X11. (@)
  • Renamed GetScreenSize to ScreenSize (WinCRT compatibility) (B) (@)
  • WindowOrg, WindowSize, Cursor, Origin, InactiveTitle, AutoTracking, WindowTitle, (variables), ScrollTo, TrackCursor (WinCRT compatibility) (B)
  • SimulateBlockCursor, SimulateBlockCursorOff
  • Curses is not initialized at the beginning of the program, but rather when the first CRT routine is called. (B)
  • CRTInit to explicitly initialize CRT and also set some defaults (PCCharSet and update level) to more natural (and less BP compatible) values.
  • CRTSetTerminal
  • CRTAutoInitProc (variable)
  • CRTNotInitialized
  • CRTSavePreviousScreen
  • CRTSavePreviousScreenWorks
  • Any of the parameters to GetWindow may now be Null.
  • Support for panels (overlapping windows): GetActivePanel, PanelNew, PanelDelete, PanelBindToBackground, PanelIsBoundToBackground, PanelActivate, PanelHide, PanelShow, PanelHidden, PanelTop, PanelBottom, PanelMoveAbove, PanelMoveBelow, PanelAbove, PanelBelow, IgnoreCursor
  • Replaced the variables PCCharSet and UseControlChars by routines SetPCCharSet, GetPCCharSet, SetControlChars, GetControlChars. (@)
  • SetScreenSize
  • SetMonochrome
  • Renamed IsMonoMode to IsMonochrome. (@)
  • On ncurses platforms, changing the screen is now done through a shell command definable in the environment variable RESIZETERM (which defaults to resize, SVGATextMode and setfont). The variables crt_setfont_command_80_25, crt_setfont_command_80_50, crt_setfont_command_40_25 and crt_setfont_command_40_50 (Linux only) were removed. (@)
  • CRTUpdate
  • CRTRedraw
  • SetScroll
  • CRTSetCursesMode
  • RestoreTerminalClearCRT
  • CtrlKey
  • AltKey
  • AltGrKey
  • ExtraKey
  • constants chCtrlA ... chCtrlZ, kbCtrlA ... kbCtrlZ
  • Catch some signals and return pseudo function keys for them if CheckBreak is False.
  • React to screen size changes by external events and return a pseudo function key.
  • Reduced the (already small) system-dependent code, and added an overview of the few problematic features in the comment at the beginning of crt.pas.
• RegEx:
  • RegExPosFrom
  • CharSet2RegEx
  • Support for converting subexpression or complete matching references to upper or lower case while replacing them with \u7 or \l7.
  • In RegExType, the field Error is now of type PString rather than CString. (@)
• GMP:
  • mpf_exp
  • mpf_ln
  • mpf_pow
  • mpf_arctan
  • mpf_pi
  • The unit now works with version 4.x of the GMP library, but it also still works with version 2.x or 3.x.
• System:
  • SetTextBuf (B)
  • CompToDouble (D)
  • DoubleToComp (D)
  • AllocMemCount (D)
  • AllocMemSize (D)
  • Assert (D)
  • DefaultAssertErrorProc
  • AssertErrorProc (variable) (D)
  • NoErrMsg (variable) (D)
  • RealToBPReal, BPRealToReal to convert between binary BP compatible 6 byte reals and GPC's reals (useful, e.g., for binary file exchange with BP programs) (B)
  • Ofs, Seg, Ptr, CSeg, DSeg, SSeg, SPtr (mostly useless and only for BP compatibility) (B)
  • A number of variables like SelectorInc (mostly useless and only for BP compatibility) (B)
  • Renamed the __BP_INTEGERS__ conditional to __BP_TYPE_SIZES__. (@)
  • New conditional __BP_PARAMSTR_0__
• Dos, WinDos:
  • GetCBreak
  • SetCBreak
  • GetVerify
  • SetVerify
  • Renamed the _Borland_16_Bit_ conditional to __BP_TYPE_SIZES__. (@)
  • Intr, MsDos, only under DJGPP if __BP_UNPORTABLE_ROUTINES__ is defined. (B)
  • DosVersion, SetDate, SetTime, only if __BP_UNPORTABLE_ROUTINES__ is defined (emulated on non-DJGPP). (B)
• Pipe:
  • New parameter Process to Pipe (@)
  • WaitPipeProcess
• PExecute:
  • Routines moved to the Pipe unit. The PExecute unit does not exist anymore. (@)
• GetOpt:
  • ResetGetOpt
  • GetOptErrorFlag is now True by default. (@)
  • Integrated into the RTS so you don't need a uses GetOpt directive anymore. (@)
  • Renamed the variables and constants used (see gpc.pas under Command Line Option Parsing). (@)
  • GetOptLong can now optionally derive the short options from the LongOptions array.
• DosUnix:
  • OEM2Latin1
  • Latin12OEM
• WinCRT:

  New unit (identical to CRT) (B)

• HeapMon:

  New unit for (simple) heap checking.

• Trap:

  New unit for runtime error trapping.

• MD5:

  New unit for computing MD5 message digests.

• FileUtils:

  New unit with some file and directory utilities.

• StringUtils:

  New unit with some string utilities.

• Intl:

  New unit for internationalization.

• GPC-BP:

  A GPC unit for BP to provide some GPC compatibility to BP programs and make it easier to gradually convert them to GPC. (G)

A few of the units (in particular: CRT, GMP and RegEx) require libraries. The sources of the libraries, with small patches where necessary, as well as binaries for i586-pc-linux-gnu, i586-pc-linux-gnulibc1, m68k-linux, sparc-sun-solaris2, i386-pc-go32, i386-pc-cygwin32 and i386-pc-mingw32 are available from

http://www.gnu-pascal.de/libs/

GPC Manual

• Some very obsolete sections of the manual (e.g., the output of running the PVS test suite on an Alpha machine in 1995 ;-) were removed.
• The manual was restructured. Several partly overlapping chapters were included into the Programmer's Guide, and the overlapping material was merged into more coherent sections.
• The BP QuickStart Guide was left a separate chapter and completed with a section about differences between BP and GPC, especially mentioning endianness issues.
• A lot of new material was added to the Programming and Reference chapters.
• The list of command-line options and the list of keywords for the various dialects were updated, and from now on, they are automatically kept up to date, directly from the source. The Invoking GPC chapter does not contain all options inherited from GCC anymore (these can be found in the GCC manual, anyway), but rather more extensive descriptions of the most commonly used GPC options, with examples.
• The interface of all units included with GPC, together with a short description of the units, is now included in the manual. The interface, also that of the GPC module which describes the interface to the Run Time System, is formatted more nicely, especially in the printed version of the manual.
• The Support chapter was updated, now including information about GPC's Test Suite and how to report bugs most effectively, as well as up-to-date contact information.
• The installation instructions were updated, now matching the current GPC and GCC versions.
• The FAQ, the To-Do list, and the list of new features (this one :-) were integrated into the manual.
• The list of authors in the manual was updated, and the list of contributors was included from the WWW page.
• The manual was integrated with GPC's WWW pages, i.e. most of the WWW pages were synchronized with the corresponding information in the manual, and both now contain the same information.
• The GNU Pascal Coding Standards (English, German and Croatian) have been added.
• Translation of the manual into Croatian has started.

Demo Programs

• There is a number of new demo programs to demonstrate some features of the compiler and the units. The demo programs are part of source and binary GPC distributions. After installation, they can be found in <prefix>/doc/gpc/demos/.
• The demo programs printed in the GPC Manual (currently 192, but expected to become more) are now installed as separate files, ready to be compiled, in a directory <prefix>/doc/gpc/docdemos/.

Utilities

• BP compatible binobj utility

Test Suite

The Test Suite is used to verify that all features of GPC work as expected and to reproduce bugs reported. Test programs for bugs found by users and for new features are constantly added. The test suite is part of source, not binary, GPC distributions, and it is available separately for download.

• As usual, many new tests have been added to the Test Suite.
• The Test Suite now supports WARN to check for warnings. On the other hand, WRONG tests are now run with warnings switched off to detect only real errors.
• The few checks dependent on the system or certain installed tools or libraries have been equipped with checks about the system properties, and are skipped on systems on which they are not applicable.
• The old dejagnu tests have been integrated into the Test Suite.
• make pascal.check (or make check-pascal) now runs the current Test Suite (as make check2-gpc did before) rather than the (now removed) dejagnu tests. This must be done in the build directory (not the p subdirectory) or in the test subdirectory of the source directory. (@)
• The Test Suite now produces a summary output by default. To get the long output format as before, run make pascal.check-long (or check-pascal-long) now. (@)
• The GPC Manual as well as the test/README file in source distributions (or BUGS in binary distributions) tells you how to run the Test Suite and describes all features of the testing environment, to make it easier for users to construct even exotic new tests, and contains some generic instructions on how to report bugs.

Legend

(@):	minor backward-incompatibility
(B):	BP compatibility
(D):	Delphi compatibility
(G):	GPC compatibility :-)

Have fun,

The GNU Pascal Development Team