Question

I am working on a delphi 7 project with a minimalistic system.pas /sysinit.pas
When I try to use records in my project my compiler brings this error:

System unit out of date or corrupted: missing '@InitializeRecord'

Since I am trying to program in pure pascal / no RTL is there a way to manually enable/call the Initialization for the records?!

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Delphi compiler relies on some “intrinsic functions”, which are called by the generated code.

For instance, when you define a record in your code, the Delphi compiler will generate a call to InitializeRecord, even if you do not use any RTL. This is the same for string and dynamic array handling.

So you won’t be able to by-pass and ignore those functions, since they are expected to exist by the compiler itself.

Delphi is not meant to strip down the low-level RTL units. I’ve done that in some cases:

• For our LVCL units (similar to your expections), our enhanced RTL files can be compiled especially to be stripped down when LVCL conditional is defined;
• For DWPL-based projects, targeting DOS with the Delphi compiler;
• The TORO kernel.

FreePascal is much better when down-stripping the system units. Since it targets even embedded systems, you can optionally strip string support, FPU, or even whole heap process.