Virtual Pascal
Virtual Pascal is a compiler with a Turbo Pascal- like development environment for OS / 2 and 32-bit Windows with cross-platform support for Linux and 32-bit DOS extenders . It supports the programming languages Pascal and Object Pascal .
history
In 1990 Vitaly Miryanov worked at the Institute for Cybernetics at the University of Kiev ( Ukraine ) on a 32-bit operating system with which the 486 PCs with several DOS boxes, which were still extremely expensive at that time and for the conditions there, used in multitasking mode via terminals could become. Vitaly's job was to develop and maintain a debugger for this environment, which was still completely written in assembly language.
The development in assembler was very tedious and error-prone, even if it led to lean and fast programs. This was the reason for him to start working on a Borland-Pascal-compatible 32-bit Pascal compiler in early 1993.
In the meantime, IBM had released OS / 2 and Vitaly chose this platform as the new basis for his compiler. In addition to the pure compiler, he also wrote a text-mode development environment and a source-level debugger.
In January 1995 an alpha version of the system was completed. The compiler and debugger were written entirely in assembler, the development environment in Pascal, which was translated with the compiler itself. Another four months of bug fixing finally led to the release of Beta 3, which u. a. spread worldwide via FidoNet .
In the meantime, the situation in Ukraine had deteriorated so much that Vitaly had to look for a way to find outside support for his project . He found her in the person of Allan Mertner , head of software development at fPrint UK Ltd. , a company based in London . Within six months all bureaucratic obstacles were finally overcome and the Miryanov family moved to London, where Vitaly began to work full-time on Virtual Pascal.
Version 1.00 was ready five months later. At this point, however, OS / 2 was already on the decline, so that the product was not commercially successful. fPrint brought a version 1.1 onto the market, but this did not bring in the costs of further development. Virtual Pascal was initially only used internally by fPrint to compile part of its own software for OS / 2. Vitaly started working on other projects.
In 1999 a team of three fPrint employees, Allan Mertner, Vitaly Miryanov and Thomas Müller, who joined them from Germany, began to work on the further development of Virtual Pascal in their free time. This finally led to the completion of version 2.0 in August 1999, which, in addition to many enhancements for compatibility with Borland Pascal and Delphi, also contained a compiler and a development environment for 32-bit Windows .
In 2000, Peregrine Systems acquired fPrint . Allan Mertner was able to convince the decision-makers to hand over the rights to Virtual Pascal to him, so that version 2.1 was finally released in September 2000. New in this version was rudimentary support for Linux as the fourth target platform (in addition to OS / 2, Win32, DOS with 32-bit extenders). Since a financial success had become more than doubtful, this version was offered as freeware.
Since then, further development has stagnated. The development team broke up, Allan moved to Canada , Vitaly stayed in London and Thomas went back to Germany.
In November 2003 a bugfix release Virtual Pascal 2.1 was published.
On April 4, 2005 Allan Mertner officially declares Virtual Pascal to be "dead":
“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. "
- Translation: “I don't know if anyone noticed, but I regret to say that Virtual Pascal died a silent death. It was born in 1995 and died in 2005 at the ripe old age (for software) of 10 years. "
On July 3, 2007, Allan Mertner opens a social network at Ning in order to provide the remaining Virtual Pascal users with a new communication platform and download option. The original homepage had to be closed months earlier due to ongoing hacker attacks and technical difficulties.