As a 4D developer, you often want full control over what gets included in your projects. Starting with 4D 21, you can now decide which components provided by 4D are part of your application.
Why make components optional?
Until now, all standard 4D components were installed by default, even if your project didn’t use them. With 4D 21, you can streamline your environment by only including the 4D components you actually need, such as:
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4D-Widgets
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4D-Progress
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4D-SVG
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4D-WritePro-Interface
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4D-NetKit
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4D-ViewPro
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4D-AIKit
This modular approach makes your project more efficient.
Managing dependencies in 4D 21
All these components are now publicly available and downloadable from the GitHub release repository, ensuring that you can always install or update them as needed.
The Add Dependency window has been updated to simplify the process:
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The GitHub tab now includes a combo box that lists all available standard 4D components.
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By default, when you add a standard 4D component, its dependency rule is automatically set to Follow 4D version.
Compatibility with older projects
When you open a project created in a pre-21 versions of 4D, a message appears allowing you to choose whether to import all user components immediately, import them manually, or delay the import. This ensures a smooth transition with no missing features.
Build application
When building the application, component management is simplified because only the components imported into the project appear in the component list.
Conclusion
With this new level of flexibility in 4D 21, you gain full control over your project dependencies. You can decide exactly which standard 4D components to include and ensure your runtime environment only contains what’s necessary.