[Lazarus] An online package manager

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2015, Juha Manninen wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Michael Van Canneyt
> <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
>> Why not ? fppkg just needs a zip file, and expects a fpmake.pp.
>> The fpmake.pp is easily translatable to lazarus package and vice versa.
>
> Now I have a gap in my knowledge.
> I thought that fpmake is a replacement for "make", not for Lazarus packages.
> I want to understand this topic better.

It is both.

Sources are divided in packages. 
A package is defined as a set of units that are built together.

fpmake does 2 things:
- It enumerates the units that make up the package.
- It has some metadata: author, version, description.
- It provides exact build instructions for the units.
- As part of the build instructions, dependencies between packages but also between units can (and must) be specified.

As you can see, this is the equivalent of a lazarus package, and even a little better 
since lazarus (currently) does not manage dependencies between units.

fpmake can also
- Compile the units/programs
- Create a manifest file (this is the equivalent of a package file, it's also XML)
- Create a source zip 
- Onstall the units where the compiler can find them (this would not be needed for lazarus packages)
- Create the documentation.
- I have an extension (uncommitted) where it also can compile and run a testsuite.

This is currently the domain of the lazarus IDE or lazbuild.

So,

one possible working scheme that was originally though of:
- use fpmake/fppkg as package format
- Inside lazarus, let fpmake generate a lazarus package (should be a no-brainer)
- Lazarus loads/compiles the generated package
Another possible working scheme is:
- use fpmake/fppkg as package format
- Lazarus packager detects fpmake and calls it to compile everything as well as generate a lazarus package.
- Lazarus loads the generated package

A third (but very improbable, I suspect ;) ) possibility is that lazarus switches building of packages to fppkg.
It was designed to make this possible.

Probably there are some variations possible.

Michael.