DelphiBlocks

Early preview — work in progress.

A command-line package manager for Delphi / RAD Studio. DelphiBlocks automates downloading, compiling, and registering third-party Delphi packages sourced from a GitHub-hosted registry.

Quick start

Install DelphiBlocks with winget (as below), or download the setup from the GitHub releases.

REM 1. Install DelphiBlocks
winget install DelphiBlocks.Blocks

REM 2. Create a workspace in the current directory (prompts for the Delphi version)
blocks init

REM 3. Install a package
blocks install owner.package

To pin or restrict the version, append @<constraint> to the package id (e.g. blocks install owner.package@^1.2.0); see docs/versioning.md.

For the full list of commands and options, see the command-line reference, or run blocks help <command>.

How it works

1. Reads a JSON manifest from the blocks-repository.
2. Downloads the package source as a ZIP from GitHub.
3. Compiles it with MSBuild against the selected Delphi version.
4. Registers the library paths in the Delphi registry and records the installation in a local database (.blocks/).

Features

• Automatic Delphi detection — discovers the installed Delphi/RAD Studio versions and their supported platforms.
• Multiple Delphi IDE profiles — target an alternative registry profile via the registrykey setting (launched with bds.exe -r MyProfile). Combined with separate workspaces, this lets you install different versions of the same package for the same Delphi version, each isolated in its own profile.
• Custom repositories — add your own GitHub-hosted repositories as package sources, alongside the default registry.
• Versioning & dependencies — versions and constraints follow SemVer; Blocks resolves the best match and installs dependencies recursively. See docs/versioning.md.
• Manifest scripts — run built-in commands (e.g. copying resources) at lifecycle events such as afterCompile or afterInstall. See docs/script.md.
• Full package management — uninstall packages, search the repository, list the installed packages and inspect their details. See the command-line reference.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11
• Delphi / RAD Studio XE6 or later (BDS 14.0 – 37.0)
• MSBuild (bundled with RAD Studio)

Output layout

When blocks install compiles a package it overrides the MSBuild output paths so that artefacts live under predictable locations.

Artefact	Output path
BPL files	.blocks\bpl\ (release) and .blocks\bpl\debug\ (debug)
DCP files	.blocks\dcp\ (release) and .blocks\dcp\debug\ (debug)
DCU files	.blocks\lib\<name>\<Platform>\ (release) and .blocks\lib\<name>\<Platform>\debug\ (debug), where <name> is the manifest's name

Both debug and release configurations are built for every package. The fixed .blocks\ location keeps installations under different IDE registry profiles (created with bds.exe -r <key>) isolated: each workspace gets its own .blocks\ tree, so artefacts never collide.

Package manifest

Each package in the repository is described by a JSON manifest file (<vendor>.<name>.manifest.json). It declares the package id and version, the source repository, the platforms and source paths to register, the .dproj packages to build, and any dependencies.

For an annotated example and a full field-by-field reference, see docs/manifest.md.

Building from source

All source files are under Source/. Building requires Delphi 13 or later. The project has no external dependencies: open Source\Blocks.dproj in Delphi / RAD Studio and compile. The compiled executable (Blocks.exe) is placed in the project root.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.