Editing Free Pascal (section)

=== Version 2.4.x ===
The 2.4.x release series had a less clear set of goals than earlier releases. The unit system rewrite was postponed again, and the branch that became 2.4 was created to keep risky commits from 2.2 to stabilize it. Mostly these risky commits were more involved improvements to the new platforms, Mac PowerPC 64, Mac x86-64, iPhone, and many fixes to the ARM and x86-64 architectures in general, as well as DWARF.

Other compiler improvements included [[whole program optimization]] (WPO) and [[devirtualization]] and ARM [[embedded-application binary interface]] (EABI) support.

Later, during the 2.2 cycle, a more [[Delphi (software)|Delphi]]-like resource support (based on special sections in the binary instead of Pascal constants) was added. This feature, direly needed by Lazarus, became the main highlight of the branch.

Other more minor additions were a [[memory management|memory manager]] that improved [[Dynamic memory allocation|heap]] manager performance in [[Thread (computer science)|threaded]] environments, small improvements in Delphi compatibility such as <code>OleVariant</code>, and improvements in [[Interface (computer science)|interface]] [[Delegation (programming)|delegation]].

On January 1, 2010, Free Pascal 2.4.0 was released, followed on November 13, 2010, by bug fix release 2.4.2, with support for <code>for..in</code> loops, <code>sealed</code> and <code>abstract</code> classes, and other changes.<ref>[http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.2 User Changes 2.4.2]</ref>