Free Pascal Compiler

Performance improvements were made for heap and ansistrings. The database components received many updates. Bindings were added for the Apple universal interfaces.

The compiler now supports more CPUs (AMD-64, SPARC, PPC (32/64 bit), and ARM) and more platforms (Mac OS classic, Mac OS X, MorphOS, and Novell Netware). The runtime library has extended to be more compatible with Delphi and support a lot of new features like threading, interfaces, widestrings, and rudimentary variant support. This release has greatly improved components for database access. All runtime library routines are now documented. A textmode IDE based on Free Vision is included in the release.

The compiler now has support for ARM processors.
Threading support has been merged into the System unit.
Variant support has been improved. The FCL now supports
Interbase/Firebird, PostgreSQL, and MySQL 4.0 under
Windows. GTK2 bindings are now included.

The compiler now also supports Linux on the Sparc and
x86_64. The compile mode MacPas and support for Classic
MacOS (MPW) has been added for better compatibility with
Pascal used on the Mac. The optimizer now supports register
variables on all targets. The RTL has a new heap manager
and support for tthread.synchronize.

The compiler now supports Mac OS X on the PowerPC and
Linux on ARM. The reintroduce keyword is recognized and
Prefetch support was added. A MacPas compile mode was
implemented for more compatibility with classic Mac OS
sources.