Lazarus (IDE)

Lazarus

Lazarus IDE 1.0 running on macOS
Developer(s)	Volunteers (Lazarus Team)
Stable release	1.6.2 / November 13, 2016; 3 months ago (2016-11-13)
Repository	sourceforge.net/p/lazarus/code/HEAD/tree/
Development status	Active
Written in	Object Pascal
Operating system	Cross-platform, including Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris
Platform	x86, x86-64, ARM, IA-32, PowerPC
Available in	Multi-language
Type	RAD tool for Pascal and Object Pascal
License	GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, and others
Website	www.lazarus-ide.org

Lazarus is a free cross-platform visual integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid application development (RAD) using the Free Pascal compiler, which supports dialects of Object Pascal, to varying degrees. Software developers use Lazarus to create native-code console and graphical user interface (GUI) applications for the desktop, and also for mobile devices, web applications, web services, visual components and function libraries (.so, .dll, etc., for use by other programs). The Free Pascal compiler supports a number of different platforms, such as Mac, Linux and Windows.

Lazarus inherits three features from its use of the Free Pascal compiler: compile speed, execution speed, and cross-compilation. The Free Pascal compiler benefits from the Pascal language structure and the steady advancements of the Pascal compiler design (spanning several decades) to compile large applications quickly, often in a matter of seconds. When compiling reference programs for performance metrics, Lazarus produces programs that exhibit near or similar performance when compared with the same programs written in C.

An application that developers create using Lazarus on one platform can potentially compile and execute on any platform for which a Free Pascal compiler exists. The usual caveats of the limitations of the target platform apply; however, for desktop applications a single source can target Mac, Linux, and Windows, usually with no modification (or very little modification). An example application is the Lazarus IDE which itself was created using the Lazarus IDE from a single code base and is available on all major platforms and also runs on the Raspberry PI.

Most similar to earlier versions of the Borland Delphi, Lazarus provides a highly visual development environment for the creation of rich user interfaces, application logic, and other supporting code artifacts. Along with the customary project management features, the Lazarus IDE also provides features that includes but are not limited to:

Lazarus uses Free Pascal as its back-end compiler. Therefore, Lazarus can, theoretically, be used to develop applications for all platforms supported by Free Pascal.