FreeBASIC Compiler Reviews

A miraculous project of great design, re-introduces BASIC as a "better C". Numerous libraries, very good ergonomics and balance in features.

The world's best BASIC compiler, it generates GNU GCC-compatible files and is compatible with libraries written in GNU GCC. It also uses the WIN32 API to write native Windows applications. There are two IDEs for writing code, one of which is visual, an excellent alternative to Visual BASIC.

Very good compiler. Cross-platform. Can make Windows DLL and Linux SO, without changes at all. Installed and configured in Windows with Geany editor.

FreeBASIC is a wonderful version of BASIC with excellent interoperability with C. The syntax is easy to learn and the compiler is easy to set up. I have set up FreeBASIC on four of my computers, 2 PC's running Win 11 and 2 PC's running Lubuntu. One, of course, has to be familiar with using the command line and setting up the PATH to the compiler. If one is looking for an easy to set up all-in-one solution for Windows with the compiler 'built-in', then look for WinFBE by Paul Squires on Github.

Somewhat compatible witn QBasic programs. Extremely slow for console I/O (PRINT TAB()).

There is no documentation other than a readme.txt, and the biggest problem I've found--and have had--is getting it to load and run. It's actually EASIER for me to recompile old programs using DosBox and QB45--as much as a pain as it is.

What is it? Can I get it to run on win8?

I made sure all the prereqs were installed on my Linux machine and then did the install. Get a bunch of errors on the hello.bas source supplied. Obviously not ready for a Linux environment.

Very good project : very useful

This compiler can be a very important 1st step to become programmer rather than simple MS Excel user with quick-basic built-int.

Nice FB2C++ convertor, just little help with main C dll and it is speed like direct written C. Without small help linked C dll support, is slower than JavaScript.

Very easy to learn and use, even for bigger projects.

First, in response to tespro below, large serious compilers use lots of memory and the way to get that in DOS is by the DPMI service (whatever that is) that makes high memory available to programs and data. Windows includes that and Linux/Unix makes high memory available, but DOS doesn't (FreeDOS does, I think). So a compiler like fbc or djgpp's gcc needs a DPMI add-on to work in pure DOS. It's available as one of the djgpp files from delorie.com, and I think it needs to be installed by the config.sys boot script. The instructions should be on the delorie website. I like to compile my own version of such projects and stash them in /usr/local, but I found a problem with compiling FreeBASIC. It wants ffi.h and I just built and installed libffi-3.2.1. The header wasn't found. I dug and found that this lib release installs ffi.h in an odd place. It makes a folder, /usr/lib/libffi-3.2.1/include and puts the two created headers there. I copied them to /usr/include and the compilation proceeded ok. Haven't tried the actual compiler. I think I'd rather have the entire package coded in a standard language like C or C++ instead of like Ada, with a component that must be built with self-compilation by a previous version. I'm also not seeing that there's a test suite to be run by "make check" to make sure everything's working correctly. That would inspire confidence in users who might want to use FreeBASIC for business and other serious purposes. Hey, I've built new versions of the GCC compilers a number of times, always fun to see a build run quite cleanly. Speaking of standards compliance, the program statement for i=1 to 4:print i;" ";:next should leave 3 spaces between the positive numbers. In testing various Basics, I've seen everything from 2 to 8 spaces between numbers. Standards compliance is kinda scarce in Basic. You wouldn't find that inaccuracy in a language implementation for grownups. I'm rating the fbc pages mediocre for hiding the source, and the rest of it is pretty good.

great project. I use the Windows/DOS/Linux and even ARM port. An excellent open source implementation of the venerable BASIC language, but now with Object Oriented features, and modern graphics, sound and other goodies.