Determining Delphi Runtime Packages to Include

Question

I have a Delphi DLL that houses a form which uses a variety of third party components. This DLL is used by many different versions of Delphi. I compile the third party components into the DLL. I believe I still need to link to some "base" Delphi packages like rtl, vcl, etc, so my DLL will use the same memory manager and other global resources that the Delphi IDE is using. How do I find out what BPLs I need to link to?

Ideally I'd like to point some utility at my DLL or project and have it list every BPL that it would depend on if I was only using BPL's and had no source files available. Then I could view that list and pick the packages I want to load at runtime. The current list given in the project properties under "Runtime Packages" is incomplete (as it has been tweaked over the years).

Answer 1

Check the "Build with Runtime Packages", leaving the whole list of packages the way it is.

Do a Project|Build (not compile!). After the build completes, use Project|View Information on ; the resulting dialog will give you a list of the actual packages you need to distribute.

After Jeremy's comment about the default list of packages being empty when he enables building with packages, here's the list from that options dialog from Delphi 2010:

   vclx;vcl;vclimg;dbrtl;Rave77VCL;bdertl;rtl;vclactnband;xmlrtl;
   vcldb;vcldbx;vcltouch;dsnap;dsnapcon;TeeUI;TeeDB;Tee;vclib;
   ibxpress;adortl;IndyCore;IndySystem;IndyProtocols;inet;
   intrawebdb_100_140;Intraweb_100_140;VclSmp;vclie;inetdb;
   webdsnap;websnap;inetdbbde;inetdbxpress;soaprtl;vclribbon;
   DbxCommonDriver;DbxClientDriver;DBXInterBaseDriver;DBXMySQLDriver;
   dbexpress;dbxcds;SynEdit_R2009

Answer 2

Check a tool I wrote called "Required" - you can download from http://www.drbob42.com/tools

Answer 3

"This DLL is used by many different versions of Delphi."

Do you mean that you have programs written with Delphi 7 and other programs written with Delphi 2007 etc. that use the same precompiled DLL?

In that case you cannot use any packages to share object types and memory between program and DLL because they will use different versions of the packages wich are not compatible.