Lazarus with FPC3.0 without UTF-8 mode

This page explains the problems and their possible solutions when using Lazarus with FPC 3.0+ but without the new UTF-8 mode.

To disable the new UTF-8 mode, -dDisableUTF8RTL must be defined in project options, "Additions and Overrides" page. There is a button "Use system encoding" to help adding it with one click. This way it affects both the project and all its dependent packages, including LazUtils which contains the relevant code.

Many of the problems you encounter are counter-intuitive. Bart has collected some reported issues under this meta-issue :

http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=28857