[Feature Request] Install domains (project / application)

Unity Engine
1

Currently all packages are installed on a project domain and added to the project’s manifest.json.

While that makes sense for most packages that add features/APIs etc. there are some packages such as “com.unity.ide.rider” or “com.unity.quicksearch” that would be more reasonable to add to an application wide scope.

Due to them being dependent on the developer workflow and not on the project this has 2 reasons:

  • Developers that use those features probably want them application wide without having to add the package to every project
  • When installing them on project scope and adding them to manifest.json those tools are installed for all developers collaborating on that project, even if they don’t use it. The project would work just fine without installing those packages.

Thus I propose the addition of different install scopes/domains similar to npm’s --global flag.

Whether the scope should be dependent on the creator setting a flag in the package’s manifest (package.json) or the user installing the package might be up for debate.

1 Like
2

Hi @ScallyGames ,

I totally understand your feature request. And this is something we have discussed and thought about many times internally. We have a couple of features planned that go in the direction you are pointing to. The first one is developer dependencies. Per user developer dependencies would be the next step. Don’t hold your breath though. This is not in our short/mid-term plans.

Regards,

Pascal

3

Perfect, developer and per user dependencies are pretty much exactly what I intended with this issue and I’m glad to hear it’s somewhere on the roadmap.