[Lazarus] An online package manager

[Juha Manninen]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Aradeonas <aradeonas at operamail.com> wrote:
> Is there any work on this subject until now or any one like to work on this
> subject? If yes I want to help.

The fppkg is for FPC packages. It does not work with Lazarus packages.
There is a GUI for fppkg in Lazarus named LazarusPackageManager but it
is broken. It should be fixed or removed.

We need a similar system for Lazarus packages and maybe other Lazarus resources.
The idea is not new and there is even some skeleton code for it in
package "Aarre". Nothing functional yet unfortunately.

Studying this issue has been on my ToDo list for long. Some open questions :

1. How much synergy with fppkg should it have? Can it share code?

2. Meta-package file format? I guess it should be a GZip package
containing Lazarus package sources + other metadata. What other
resources should be supported? More metadata is needed.

3. Support for user comments and votes for the packages. The GUI in
Lazarus must support adding and viewing them.

4. List of servers. Initially it should be CCR but can be extended.
The ideal situation is that all package authors provide such
meta-packages somewhere.

5. A website. Is it needed to find the packages and advertise them?
This may have synergy with fppkg again.

If you are serious about this project, you should study the issue and
make a plan with some diagrams even.
I believe a SVN branch in Lazarus repo can be organized if needed.
If fppkg code must be refactored and then reused, it may be easier to
first fork it and then later offer to FPC project as a patch.

Regards,
Juha