Carbon Interface

What you need

The Carbon widgetset is in an early stage of development. A fully functional Lazarus IDE on MacOS X is strongly recommended. For instructions see Installing Lazarus on MacOS X.

Getting a carbonproof Lazarus

• Install SVN for MacOS X: A good package is provided by Martin Ott.
• Then follow Installing_Lazarus#Downloading_Lazarus_SVN

• Start Lazarus. The IDE will start with a new project with an empty form. Save this project under a name of your choice. In the following examples we assume this to be /Users/<yourUsername>/pascal/test/project1.lpi

Compiling the Carbon Interface

We now assume your Lazarus directory is located at /Users/<yourUsername>/pascal/lazarus/

• Start Lazarus.
• Set Environment>Environment Options>Files>Lazarus Directory to /Users/<yourUsername>/pascal/lazarus/
• Set Tools>Configure "Build Lazarus"> to

• Tools>Build Lazarus -- This will compile the Carbon Interface and put the .ppu files into /Users/<yourUsername>/pascal/lazarus/lcl/units/powerpc-darwin and /Users/<yourUsername>/pascal/lazarus/lcl/units/powerpc-darwin/carbon

Your first native Carbon App

Compiler Options

Set Project > Compiler Options > Paths > LCL Widget Type to carbon

Set Project > Compiler Options > Linkink > Options Check Pass Options to the Linker

and type in the edit field:

-framework carbon

You should now be able to compile the project without errors. It will create an executable project1, but you can not focus it. That's because MacOSX expects some hidden resource files.

Creating the Apple Resource files

There is a tool to create these files.

Open /Users/<yourUserName>/pascal/lazarus/components/macfiles/examples/createmacapplication.lpi in the IDE. Compile.

Open a Terminal of your choice. Type:

cd /Users/<yourUserName>/pascal/project1/
/Users/<yourUserName>/pascal/lazarus/components/macfiles/examples/createmacapplication project1
ln -s ../../../project1 project1.app/Contents/MacOS/project1

Now you can start the program via its Finder icon or in the native MacOS Terminal via ./project1.app/Contents/MacOS/project1

Carbon interface internals

If you want to help improving the carbon interface, see here

Carbon interface internals