Is BPL-style external package support an eventual feature goal for Lazarus?

[Akira1364]

Or is the current method an intentional design choice? Both ways have their own pros and cons, so I feel like it wouldn't hurt to offer users a choice between either one. It seems like it would not be unrealistically difficult to implement, either. As an example, I once just for fun spent some time porting the old DeDe 3.10b source code to work with Lazarus, and I was able to get its BPL-To-DSF dumper and loader working perfectly. It only took about 20 minutes to get the Delphi LoadPackage function (which both those tools required) to compile without errors. Note that none of what I'm saying here should be taken as any kind of criticism of the efforts of the FPC/Lazarus team... I'm merely positing an idea.

[Cyrax]

Support for dynamic packages for FPC is currently going on. See this : http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/branches/svenbarth/packages/?sortby=date&view=log

Maybe Sven Barth can give some insight for it.

[marcov]

Well, there are several big white spots that are missing:

- Windows is the platform that has been "done", so obviously the easiest. FPC/Lazarus have about 20 more.
- the BPL (-alike) generation and usage over .ppu's also must be done.
- Loadpackage loads Delphi packages, which probably won't be compatible with FPC ones to begin with.
- debugging.

So basically you rode the first piece of the road that is already ready, and then, just before the abyss conclude that it can't be that hard to ride out the full road.