Do you have any programming experience ?
If not you should first get some programming experience with Delphi by
creating new stuff yourself.
Projects can be quite complex and contain lot's of stuff. It would probably
be a bad way to learn because it would be quite difficult to learn like
that.
On the other hand assuming you have some programming experience, and
especially some programming experience with Delphi then I can give you some
further advice which is basically very simply. If you have not yet had
experience with Delphi, then please get some experience first, by
programming some stuff, and reading up about units, packages, and how that
works.
Once you understand the concepts of units, interface vs implementation
section, and packages, and once you also understand how to put them onto the
search path, then can you start to install other components and packages and
units successfully.
Delphi versions do vary a bit in this, the latest situation is probably that
packages do not install themselfes properly anymore because they do not add
themselfes to the search path.
Further problems could occur with multiple different versions of packages
leading to bpl conflicts in the bpl folder. My advice would be to remove
those settings from project options or environment completely and put a dot
in there... I wrote about that in the past, perhaps that posting is still up
somewhere... though for a noobie maybe it's better to leave settings as it
is currently.
Now onto the advice about what you want to do, if you still want to do that
then the advice is basically pretty simple: Ask the people who wrote the
bloody application which components and packages it needs, it should be
documented somewhere. If not sent them a bloody email about it lol.
Or you could try to figure it out yourself and find stuff.
Simply download the project, try to compile it. If delphi says: "can't find
unit X".
Then search google for unit X and try to figure out to what package it
belongs. Then download that package or unit.
Install it into delphi.
Two ways to install into delphi:
1. Open the package, and click build/install.
and/or
2. Add folder of package/unit to search path.
Step 2 might even be required for step 1.
Installing packages leads to the advantage of having the controls on the
tool palette.
This is not necessarily required to build projects I think... but it could
be required and is probably required and I am pretty sure it is required to
see the gui builder/forms.
Otherwise it will complain about controls not found.
So if you want to see the gui and edit it then all gui controls must be
installed into Delphi and thus require packages normally speaking.
I don't know what InnoSetup is.
Anyway, there could also be a dependency tree or a particular order in which
controls must be present.
Think of it as a tree which contains leaves.
A panel is like the root, and can contain other controls.
If it was a special panel control, then it will need to be installed first
because that's probably where Delphi will give the first issue's/errors.
Once that control is installed, it will start to bitch about other controls
missing on the panel.
And thus you move onto the next control, try to figure out what it is and
where to get/download it.
Google is your friend here...
Try Torri Delphi pages and individual websites of individual programmers who
else put out their controls on their own websites.
You could also post the missing control names or units names in this thread
and see if anybody recgonizes it ;)
Bye,
Skybuck.