Lazarus (software)

Lazarus is a combined source code editor, form designer, project- and component-manager for Free Pascal. It attempts - and succeeds, wildly - to be an open-source replacement for the (closed source, proprietary) Delphi IDE. Lazarus includes such features as:


 * Comment folding - a block comment such as { } or (* *) can have the contents disappear to allow it to be ignored
 * Code folding - whole procedure, functions, -, and  -  blocks can be compressed down into one statement
 * Tabbed editing - any files in the project can be opened as individual tabs which can be switched to
 * Syntax highlighting - keywords like,  ,  , etc. will appear differently than variables like   or  . Also, numbers and strings will appear in a different color than comments.
 * Support for visually impaired users - The color selections can be changed to suit your preferences. The source code font size can be increased or decreased through Control-mousewheel.
 * Projects can be managed through Lazarus including files and units used, options to pass to the compiler, as well as settings for the project. Compilation options such as building for a different level of processor (like building a 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine or vice-versa), different processor (building for an ARM-7 processor on a machine with AMD or Intel processor), or different operating system (building a Windows executable on Linux or vice-versa).
 * A complete form designer allowing "drag and drop" component placement on a form, with object inspector, allowing properties of widgets on the form to be adjusted. Also, the editor provides "one-click" creation of the methods used to handle form events.
 * Macro expansion, allowing certain keys to be used to insert code into a source code file.
 * Supports creation of third-party components which can be used with the Lazarus Form Designer.
 * Lazarus itself is written in 100% Free Pascal, as are all components.

Lazarus includes the latest Free Pascal compiler, so you don't have to download it separately (unless you want the compiler sources, or the sources to Lazarus itself). Lazarus can be downloaded from the Lazarus IDE website, or from Sourceforge.

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