[Lazarus] Issues with creating packages that have dependencies with other packages

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2012 18:38:46 +0200
Krzysztof <dibo20 at wp.pl> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm author and maintainer of BGRA Controls package. This package must
> have installed BGRA Bitmap package. I'm wondering, can I somehow
> include BGRA Bitmap into BGRA Controls package? I want this solution
> because then I know that everything should work (user could have some
> old version of BGRA Bitmap) My doubts:
> 
> 1. Is the license permits it? Both packages are on LGPL
> 2. How to do it? Just copy source of BGRA Bitmap to BGRAControls
> directory and add path to this folder in package options?
> 3. How to Lazarus behave if user have installed some other version of
> BGRA Bitmap and try to install BGRA Controls with BGRA Bitmap
> included? Which version of BGRA Bitmap my controls use? Local or
> global?
> 4. Is this good practice anyway?

You don't need to merge both packages.
Simply distribute both packages. For example:

dir1/pkg1.lpk
dir2/pkg2.lpk

pkg2.lpk depends on pkg1. Right click on the dependency and set it as
default. When a user downloads them and opens pkg2.lpk the IDE will
automatically open pkg1.lpk too.
If the user already has pkg1.lpk the user package will be taken.

You can not install two packages with the same unit names.

Mattias