What is the best way to install components?
Installing components under Delphi XE3 is a nightmare.
First I need to add source files to
Tools -> Options -> Library
then I need to find a normal package and compile it
This is just quite tedious and error prone. Is there a nicer way to install components?
I have found Delphi Package Installer. Unfortunately it doesn't support Delphi XE3 or above.
I have heard that there is something similar which produces exe packages that install themselves (something like Inno Setup) but I can't find such thing.
No. The steps above are required.
First, adding the file path to Tools->Options->Delphi Options->Library Path is so the compiler knows where to find the files to compile them. (Actually, it's not required - you can eliminate this step by making sure that the .dpk files are in the same folder as the .pas files, and that all .pas file names are listed in the includes section in the .dpk. If the .pas files are in a different location, you'll need to either use relative paths in the .dpk (eg., MyComponents in '..SourceMyComponents.pas' ) or add the location of the .pas files to Project->Options->Delphi Compiler->Search Path .)
The next step (finding the "normal package") is in order to build the runtime package. It's required, because the design-time package (next step) requires the code that's in that package in order to function in the Form Designer. It's also needed when you decide to build your application with runtime packages, if you use the third-party components and want to distribute the runtime package for it.
The separate design-time package (the third step) is required because designtime code can only be used at design-time; there's nothing that can be distributed with an application if it's built with runtime packages and the package build in step 2 is one of them.
This has been the way components are installed since around Delphi 3 or so, and the requirement to separate out designtime code into it's own package started being advised in Delphi 5 and enforced in Delphi 6 (when they relocated much of the IDE designtime support into their own separate packages and stopped distributing the source for them).
There really are no other options, unless the vendor supplies pre-build designtime and runtime packages for you, or supplies an installer that will do all of the above steps. (Most don't.) But if you update your Delphi version, you'd still have to go through the steps above.
What about the built-in component installer? It is part of Delphi XE, XE2 and XE3 and a description can be found here (I wrote it). It will even install components in C++Builder. You can instal into an existing package or into a new one, which it will create for you.
I would say that the best way to install components is to use your build manager (for example FinalBuilder) and add each component to a manager-project file which sets the necessary paths, builds the DPK files, and 'installs' the component in the IDE by making a registry entry. That way you have a documented procedure which allows you reliably to set up or repair your complete, tested, Delphi development environment. You can simply re-run the project when a component has been updated and tested. It is also quite easy to tweak an existing project to handle a new Delphi version.
The big disadvantage of a vendor-supplied installer is that all the ones I have seen simply overwrite the previous version on updates. I prefer to control the install myself, so that I have previous component source versions archived and available for comparison, in case testing reveals a problem with an upgrade. The 'one-click install' sounds fine, until a minor component upgrade suddenly causes your application to stop working.
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