Custom component dependency hell

Question

I'm trying to make a package for a custom component I made. It's based on several libraries, including Graphics32, GraphicEx and CCR.Exif.

I created a Package project, wrote the unit including its Register procedure, added some extra references Delphi notified me about to the requires section (including dbrtl.dcp, inet.dcp, soaprtl.dcp, vclimg.dcp, xmlrtl.dcp and dclGraphicEx140.dcp) and added many units to the contains section to avoid warnings about it happening implicitly. The project compiles and can be installed and used on my own machine without issues. However, when I want to install it on another machine, the troubles begin. In the end, I had to copy about all DCUs from all 3rd party components I used, plus both the DCP and BPL from GraphicEx, which I had to install even.

Supplying a lot of files is a bummer, yet surmountable, but having to install other packages as well is a no go. I could get rid of that DCP and BPL by putting even more units in the contains section, but that resulted in error messages on my own machine where GraphicEx is actually installed. This is confusing to me, because with Graphics32 nothing like that occurs...

Anyway, how do I keep my distribution to a minimum and avoid such situations? I want other developers on my team to be able to use the package without worrying about what I used to build it. For a start, can't all the 3rd party units be compiled into my own DCU?

Answer 1

What you experienced is an usual thing to the ones who write components. The distribution is always like that. Packages do not carry other packages, insted they reference them. It´s in their nature.

In order to overcome such a situation I always treat my components in the same way I would if they were a product to sell: I build a setup wizard that distributes and registers everything the package needs.

In my case InnoSetup works very well (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php).