A new feature of RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin that has gone mostly unnoticed is the ability to have project dependencies to GetIt packages. This makes is much easier to share projects that depend on third party libraries.

Since its introduction last year, the GetIt Package Manager has been continuously updated and extended with more capabilities. Since the beginning, the GetIt architecture allowed for dependencies: if library A depends on library B, when installing A you'll be prompted to install the dependent library B first. Now in Delphi and C++Builder 10.1 Berlin the mechanism has been extended so that a specific project can declare which libraries it depends on (this is not an automatic mechanism). Before looking to the solution, let me recap the issue at stake. Suppose that another developer send you a Delphi project, in my scenario one that uses the VirtualTreeView component. You open it, and if you don't have the package installed, you'll end up with an error like:

Now suppose that before sending me the project, the developer has opened the new GetIt Dependencies tab of the Project Options and set the proper dependencies, as below:

 

Now as I receive the project and open it, if I don't have the package installed, I'll be prompted to download it:

In theory, this will automatically trigger the download of the package. In practice, this triggers an error and and up making the dependencies unstable. So my recommendation is to select No, let the project open, eventually click Cancel if you receive an error that a component is not found, close all forms (but not the project), open the Project Options and install all missing packages, as below:

Now open your project forms, compile your projects and you should be up and running.

As you can see from reading above, there are still some hiccups in the process, but this is a very important new feature for the GetIt package manager, and I felt it was worth sharing despite the pending issues. If you go for a partially manual process, using the GetIt Dependencies page of the Project Options, everything should work fine.