I have a BPL project (with some base stuff) and an EXE project which has in it's Search Path the location of the other project's output (BPL and DCP). When the EXE project is built with "Build With Runtime Packages", it builds fine. However, it requires me to deploy the EXE and the BPL. So far so good.
Since I'd rather deploy just the EXE (no matter it gets bigger), I'd guess that I'd just uncheck "Build With Runtime Packages" and that'd be it, but it's not the case. It won't build, and start complaining about the missing classes. The only way I can compile the EXE project is if I add the path to the actual BPL project's DCUs to the EXE project's Search Path. I can do that, but why am I forced to point to the DCUs? Can't Delphi just take them from the BPL? It's not just a matter of taste, if I go this way, and link to the DCU's, when it comes to DCUs belonging to forms, it will then ask me for the forms DFMs, forcing me to also include my sources folder to the EXE project's Search Path, and now it would seem as they are getting compiled, which is prohibitive. I can't recompile my BPL project codebase each time I want to compile my EXE project.
I hope I have made myself clear.
Any help on how to achieve what is asked in the title is appreciated.
Thank you.
No, you can't. If you want to use runtime packages you have to turn on the compiler option to build with runtime packages.
As to the second part of your question: Building with runtime packages uses the *.dcp files to compile (the .dfm streams are linked into packages' resources so the *.dfm files are not needed directly). Building without runtime packages needs the *.dcu and *.dfm files (and any other required files).
In either case, you need to have the required files in your library/search path to be able to compile/build.