The FPC 2.4.4 release is available from our ftp-servers and sourceforge.
This is probably the final release created from the fixes_2_4 branch.

Changes that may break backwards compatibility are documented at:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.4

Downloads are available at:

the main FTP server at

ftp://193.224.143.39/pub/fpc/dist/2.4.4/

and

ftp://freepascal.stack.nl/pub/fpc/dist/2.4.4/

Note:
 the main ftp server is currently being migrated, that's why the URL is
 ip-addres based.

Enjoy!

The Free Pascal Compiler Team

                            Free Pascal Compiler

                                Version 2.4.4

*************************************************************************** ***
                              What's New in 2.4.4
*************************************************************************** ***

Free Pascal 2.4.4 contains most library fixes from early June 2010 till
March
2011. There are also some compiler fixes, most relating to 64-bit.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.4 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

Packages:
  * Many improvements to the XML units
  * Many improvements to the database units.
        * Specially sqlite got quite some fixes.
  * Many improvements to the chm units.
        * Including a commandline CHM compiler
  * Many improvements to fppkg and fpmake for another round of testing.

Platforms:
  * Fixes for multi-threading support in OS/2 RTL.

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs which have been fixed in this release.

*************************************************************************** ***
                              What's New in 2.4.2
*************************************************************************** ***

Free Pascal 2.4.2 contains many fixes and a few new features. Most bugfixes
in the RTL and packages before June 2010 have been merged.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.2 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

Compiler:
  * Support D2006+ FOR..IN, with some FPC specific enhancements. Refer to
     http://wiki.freepascal.org/for-in_loop for more information
  * Support for sealed and abstract classes.

Packages:
  * The existing Mac OS X Universal Interfaces units have been synchronised
    with the Mac OS X 10.6 SDK. Several new units have also been added, and
    where indicated in the Mac OS X 10.6 SDK they have also been enabled for
    iPhoneOS/iOS.
  * Many improvements to the XML units
  * Many improvements to the database units
  * Many improvemnets to the chm units

Platforms:
  * Long term bug in OS/2 implementation of unit Video finally fixed which
    among others allows inclusion of the text-mode IDE (without debugger)
    for this platform as part of the distribution again.

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs which have been fixed in this release.

*************************************************************************** ***
                              What's New in 2.4.0
*************************************************************************** ***

Free Pascal 2.4.0 contains many fixes and new features. While we did not
manage to incorporate all planned additions, we believe this release offers
a
nice collection of new functionality and bug fixes.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.4.0 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

Platforms:
  * New platform: Mac OS X/PowerPC64
  * New platform: Mac OS X/x86_64
  * New platform: Mac OS X/ARM (iPhone)

Compiler:
  * Support for Delphi-style resource handling
  * Whole-program optimization infrastructure, which initially supports
    program devirtualization and unused virtual method removal
  * Much faster compilation of units containing many type-sections
  * The ability to suppress individual hints/warnings/notes
  * Several improvements to the DWARF debug information generation
  * Fixes to the generics support
  * Fixes to the interface delegation (implements) support
  * Improved cpu register allocation
  * Improved ARM/EABI support

RTL:
  * Linearly scaling multi-threaded memory manager
  * Support for (advisory) file locking on Unix-based platforms
    when using the SysUtils file creation/opening routines
  * Support for ANSI ISO Extended Pascal ReadStr/WriteStr
  * A UnicodeString type that, while not yet equivalent to Delphi 2009's
    UnicodeString type, offers reference counted UnicodeString support on
    the Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Beos/Haiku platforms.

Packages:
  * Many improvements to the XML units
  * Many improvements to the database units
  * Updated the common Mac OS X Pascal interfaces to r241, including
    an updated header translation of the CFNetwork framework
  * The zipper unit now works correctly on big endian platforms

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs which have been fixed in this release.

*************************************************************************** ***
                              What's New in 2.2.4
*************************************************************************** ***

Free Pascal 2.2.4 contains many bug fixes and some new features. The
main purpose of this release is to fix problems reported with FPC 2.2.2.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.2.4 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

All:
  * Experimental packages-installation tool

Packages:
  * Added support for TIFF reading/writing in fcl-image
  * Improvements and fixes in CHM support
  * Fixed linking the gtk2-package with gtk versions above 2.13.4

IDE:
  * Added support for CHM help files

Documentation

See http://bugs.freepascal.org/changelog_page.php for the list of reported
bugs which have been fixed in this release.

*************************************************************************** ***
                              What's New in 2.2.2
*************************************************************************** ***

Free Pascal 2.2.2 contains many bug fixes and some new features. The
main purpose of this release is to fix problems reported with FPC 2.2.0,
and to remove all potentially tainted code from our source code base.

Please also see http://wiki.freepascal.org/User_Changes_2.2.2 for a list
of changes which may affect the behaviour of previously working code, and
how to cope with these changes.

Some highlights are:

All:
  *  All code potentially infringing on CodeGear copyrighted code has been
     reimplemented using a cleanroom approach.

Platforms:
  * Incompatibilities with Mac OS X 10.5's new default linker have been
    resolved.

Compiler:
  * PIC support for Mac OS X (on by default, disable with -Cg-)
  * several bugs in the experimental generics support have been fixed,
    but this feature is still in beta
  * initialisation and finalisation of shared libraries has been fixed
    for all Darwin platforms, and for Linux/i386
  * support for {$packset x} directive to enable set packing
    (use {$packset 1} for Delphi-compatible sets, but note that the
     format is different on little and big endian platforms)

RTL:
  * thread resource leaking under unix has been fixed
  * the widestring manager for unix has been completed
  * several floating point to string conversion errors have been fixed
  * significantly improved variant support
  * implementation of RTL exception handler for OS/2 allowing proper
    translation of some runtime errors
  * various fixes for GO32v2 improving useability of this target
  * OS/2 RTL enhanced to allow seamless working with large files (64-bit
    file system API calls) where available (WSeB/MCP/eCS/Warp 4 with FP15)

Packages:
  * the Windows API interface units have been significantly updated
  * Apple universal interfaces updated to r234 of the common FPC/GPC/MW
    interfaces
  * New TRegexEngine class to parse regular expressions