[Lazarus] Online Package Manager

[noreply at z505.com]

On 2016-10-04 07:11, Balázs Székely via Lazarus wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>  I decided to implement the online package manager(opkman) or at least
> give it a try. The first stable(alpha) version is ready and it works
> like this: the packages are zipped and stored in a
> webserver(repository) along with a json file. I chose zip to minimize
> server load. The json file contains all the necessary info about the
> packages. Once installed into the IDE, the opkman downloads, then
> serialize the json file into a package list. The list is  displayed in
> a tree. On request the packages can be downloaded or/and installed.
> For now the repository is read-only, it contains only eight, well
> known(I guess?) packages. The nature/type of the eight package is
> irrelevant for now, since we are only testing the functionality of the
> opkman. Few notes:
...
> 
>  Please test! Suggestions are welcome.
> 

With online package managers there is the problem of centrally locating 
all packages at a single URL or repository, correct? So which url will 
be used? Sourceforge, freepascal.org...
And then you could have mirrors if the main url is down.

Whatever happened to the freepascal package download system at the 
command line? was that ever implemented? sorry I am not up to date on 
it..
One advantage of a central package system is that it encourages people 
to upload their packages, such as like torry.net. Whereas if each guy 
has his own website and then his website goes down or he quits 
programming, that package on his site gets lost and people must use 
archive.org or brute force techniques to find it online...

Github is in a way a central package system but not really as it is not 
a download tool for binary/releases as much as it's more of a source 
only package system.  Torry.net is really interesting and is the main 
reason I never used Visual C++ studio because visual C++ never had 
anything like torry, other than codeproject.  Torry never had a way to 
connect delphi directly to it, like a rubygems or the once discussed fpc 
package manager tool at the command line.. whatever happened to that 
idea?