Create a Simple Delphi IDE Expert

Question

I want to create a simple IDE Expert for Delphi 7, like in the following image:

I've verified the links gave for this question but OTA Api newsgroup is dead, and most of the documentation is unavailable (broken links). Can someone give a starting point with this?

Trundle

documentation is shipped with D7, ToolsAPI.pas too, whats the problem?IOTAPackageServices.ComponentNames[] – Hammerfest

Broken links? I did a quick(!) check: I saw 4 links, all of them seem to work. – Sideband

@user.... - ComponentNames property (IOTAPackageServices) -ComponentNames property returns the type name of a component in a design time package. how can this help me? – Trundle

@Ulrich - delphi.about.com/od/objectpascalide/a/wizardsexperts.htm - all the links from there are broken , groups from gexperts.org/opentools are offline. mustangpeak.net now I'm reading the documentation and try to understand. – Trundle

@Radu: Do you know CompBar? delphipages.com/comp/component_bar_expert-4969.html – Sideband

it does not help? stackoverflow.com/search?q=IOTAPackageServices – Hammerfest

@Radu: try changing the links that point to community.borland.com to edn.embarcadero.com. You will also need to tweak the article numbers. For example community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20360,00.html is now edn.embarcadero.com/article/20360. – Decrescendo

Answer 1

This is not an easy task, trying to create your own Expert. It takes some extensive knowledge of the delphi open Tools api (toolsapi.pas) \

Some good places to start to learn how to create an expert and/or use of the open tools api

http://www.davidghoyle.co.uk/WordPress/?p=11

http://www.gexperts.org/otafaq.html

http://www.gexperts.org/otafaq.html#sample

http://www.gexperts.org/otafaq.html#projectgroup

http://www.gexperts.org/otafaq.html#resource

There is lots more to be found with a google search of Delphi 7 + Open Tools API

Good Luck!

Continence

could you clarify this: "There is one further change that needs to be made to the both projects in order that they can access the IDEs Open Tools API interfaces and they are handled slightly different for DLLs and Pacakages. For the DLL you need to add DesignIDE to the list of packages but for the Package you need to add DesignIDE to the packages Requires clause." how to add dcp to a project dll? – Kalgoorlie

Answer 2

The image you provided is for CnPack IDE expert. It is an open-source tool. You can download its source code from the link below, and study it:

http://code.google.com/p/cnpack/downloads/list

BTW, AFAIK Galileo is project codename for Delphi 8 and newer IDE versions, not Delphi 7.

Trireme