Installing Free Pascal

Free Pascal (often abbreviated FPC) is a free, open-source compiler that implements the Pascal language across Windows, Linux, and macOS, and it is the compiler this course uses. You can install it either as a standalone command-line compiler or bundled with the Lazarus IDE, which adds a visual form designer and integrated debugger on top of FPC. For learning the language itself, the command-line compiler is enough; Lazarus becomes valuable once you start building windowed desktop applications.

On Windows, download the FPC installer (or the combined Lazarus installer, which bundles FPC) from the official FPC or Lazarus website and run it; the installer adds fpc.exe and the necessary units to your system automatically. On macOS, you typically download the fpc-<version>.intelmac.dmg or fpc-<version>.macosx.dmg package (matching your chip architecture) and run the installer, then optionally install Lazarus separately. On Linux, most distributions provide FPC through their package manager, so on Debian or Ubuntu you would run 'sudo apt install fpc' and on Fedora 'sudo dnf install fpc', which is the fastest and most maintainable route since it integrates with your system's update mechanism.

After installing, open a terminal or command prompt and run 'fpc -iV' to print the installed compiler version, which confirms the compiler is on your system PATH. Then write a tiny test file, compile it with 'fpc hello.pas', and run the resulting executable to confirm the whole toolchain, editor, compiler, and OS, works together end to end. If 'fpc' is not recognized, the installer likely didn't add it to your PATH, and you'll need to add the FPC bin directory manually or re-run the installer with the PATH option enabled.