[HN Gopher] Debian Removes Free Pascal Compiler / Lazarus IDE
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Debian Removes Free Pascal Compiler / Lazarus IDE
Author : mariuz
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-02-25 10:02 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (forum.lazarus.freepascal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (forum.lazarus.freepascal.org)
| kasabali wrote:
| Bigger issue here is they're removing everything that depends on
| gtk2.
| pamcake wrote:
| Well that's a bummer. There's a whole generation of barely-if-
| at-all-maintained but still perfectly working utils that will
| probably be forever lost to obscurity with that.
|
| Recently I wish Debian was more Debian.
| stonogo wrote:
| With the possible exception of Hexchat, I'd wager any such
| tools were already lost to obscurity.
| curt15 wrote:
| Does gtk2 still have Debian maintainers? Whatever is in
| Debian's official repository is effectively endorsed by Debian.
| If they don't have enough capacity it's wiser to drop support
| than to sign off on something of unknown quality.
| dmz73 wrote:
| I hate losing access to software just because it is
| "unmaintained". If module is "endorsed" now, since it is
| included in current version, and there is no maintenance, so
| no changes made to it, why is it suddenly not good enough to
| "endorse" in the future? No, security issues do not count as
| they don't magically appear, either they are in there now and
| debian is fine with distributing "insecure" code or they
| don't matter. Debian is fine with shipping broken version of
| software for years as long as they consider it "stable" so
| why drop working "stable" software just because no one is
| making changes to it?
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Losing access or losing convenient access that other people
| do work to maintain for you?
| canistel wrote:
| - GTK2 is only one of the supported widget sets for Lazarus. It
| supports Qt5 & 6 too. I feel Lazarus should switch to Qt5 or 6
| until GTK3 is mature.
|
| - Hexchat IRC client is another popular application that is
| still stuck with GTK2.
| presbyterian wrote:
| Considering we're on GTK 4, I think GTK 3 is as mature as
| it's gonna get.
| hulitu wrote:
| Mature ? I would say obsolete. Just wait for GTK5 or GTK6.
| kvemkon wrote:
| This has been reported here but got not enough attention:
|
| "Debian GNOME team announces intent to remove GTK 2 in Debian
| 14" (08.01.2026)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548257
|
| P.S. Still hope GNOME maintainers let other volunteers maintain
| GTK 2.
| rlpb wrote:
| > P.S. Still hope GNOME maintainers let other volunteers
| maintain GTK 2.
|
| They already said this is fine:
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00146.html
| account42 wrote:
| It seems no distro is safe from deletionists.
| kjs3 wrote:
| You can step up and be the maintainer of GTK2 (or anything
| else that would keep the 'deletionists' at bay) any time you
| want. Go on...I'm sure you have unlimited time and resources
| like all the other Debian maintainers.
| rurban wrote:
| Nonsense. You just need to make building the gtk2 unit
| optional, so that the distros can still build it. Almost no
| one needs gtk2, just Lazarus. Usually debian maintainers
| are happy to patch the build system to do that. They got a
| bad one.
|
| The harder part is to upgrade Lazarus to qt6. Until that
| happens, Lazarus needs to be shipped as snap, flatpack or
| appimage with the gtk2 so's.
| kjs3 wrote:
| _Until that happens_
|
| Exactly. "Let me explain how _some else_ needs to do this
| thing, and how easy it is, and how that someone else
| needs to get right on that for my convenience ". Because
| you're here to condescend, not to actually do anything.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| This doesn't answer the mail:
| https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Qt6_Interface
|
| ?
| rlpb wrote:
| The maintainer driving this in Debian explicitly said:
|
| > That being said I would not object if someone wants to take
| over the maintenance of GTK2, though I believe keeping it for
| beyond duke is beating a dead horse.
|
| Source: https://lists.debian.org/debian-
| devel/2026/01/msg00146.html
| Modified3019 wrote:
| If you really need things others are no longer willing to
| maintain, then it's time to learn how to help yourself.
|
| The Nix or Guix package managers are likely your easiest bet.
| See
|
| https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Lazarus
|
| https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/developmen.
| ..
| hulitu wrote:
| I'm sure they can be easily ported to GTK3, GTK4 and then GTK5
| /s
| anthk wrote:
| That's the curse on the Unix world. At least FreeBSD, NetBSD
| (OpenBSD not by design, but that's understandable because of
| security) have their compat libraries on plus some of them (even
| GTK1) in their ports. On 9front, I just adapted Russ Cox' Xword
| (some crossword player for XWord files, it has a converter from
| Across Lite Puz files to Xword) for modern times, barely a few
| lines changes in some drawing function for software made for
| Plan9 4ed or close.
|
| PD: Guix can do the same as fbsd and nbsd because, well, setting
| up an isolated environment with time-bound tools it's basically
| what Guix was born for, reproducibility. Scientific repo for a
| paper must be run point to point as we had a Slackware setup with
| Slackbuilds in 2007? That's the point of Guix. You would say...
| docker. But docker it's overkill.
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| Didn't FreeBSD recently dropped their 32 bits x86 version ? At
| some point every open source OS will remove the parts for which
| no one is willing to put the work on maintaining it.
| iberator wrote:
| NetBSD still supports 32 bit, and VAX 780 from 1979. Best OS
| ever, highest quality and probability.
| anthk wrote:
| OpenBSD it's much easier to setup than NetBSD, on user
| friendlyness obsd beats nbsd, but as you said nbsd it's
| better on portability, I can literally run NetBSD 10.1
| under simh/vax running under... 9front. No X, because the
| emulated ethernet in the port of simh here just simulates
| nat with no option to bind it outside, although I didn't
| test it further. But for sure it runs at decent speeds,
| almost like an emulated Pentium 90, enough to run Slashem
| under vt(1) (vt100/220 emulator for 9front).
| kev009 wrote:
| As long as you don't need to touch the drive layout. I
| think the NetBSD installer is quite a bit better
| otherwise.
| jonp888 wrote:
| If you plough through the first pages so far as I can tell it
| seems like actually it won't be removed.
|
| Certainly not FPC, because the hard dependency on GTK2 was a
| misunderstanding.
|
| For Lazarus it seems like dependency on GTK2 is considered a bug
| and not a fundamental incompatibility, because there are too many
| GTK2 applications to completely remove it from Debian.
| potus_kushner wrote:
| maybe the best and simplest solution would be to not remove gtk2
| from debian. the last release is stable and there's no technical
| reason to remove it (as it still works and compiles just fine),
| only political ones.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| But! But! Unmaintained >:(!!1!!11!!!1
| guywithahat wrote:
| I don't like how political debian has been becoming in a number
| of facets, I've moved all of my machines over to Ubuntu and
| Arch and am happier because of it
| bpt3 wrote:
| You don't like decisions being based on political factors
| (rather than technical merit I assume, but feel free to
| correct me) yet you moved to Ubuntu?
|
| I don't like it either, but that's not the direction I would
| go. I haven't looked into Arch yet in enough detail to have
| an informed opinion, but maybe I should.
| kev009 wrote:
| Ubuntu is Debian with an additional layer of awkward decision
| making.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Debian has always been political, since its inception.
| enricotr wrote:
| The site seem slashdotted by us.
| imglorp wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260227192142/https://forum.laz...
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Is this the sort of thing that Flatpak would be useful for? Or
| are there sandbox-related complications when using it to package
| a compiler?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Not an expert but i don't see a problem. I use Snap-packaged
| compilers on Ubuntu all day, and have used Flatpak'd IDEs
| fuzztester wrote:
| looks like slashdot effect is ongoing for the site.
| random29ah wrote:
| Meanwhile, slackware-current has the good old gtk1 and I believe
| it's only for xmms.
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(page generated 2026-02-27 23:01 UTC)