Bundling

When a data pack has dependencies, it can quickly become a burden for the user to manage and install all of them. This is why it can be useful to merge the dependencies with the final data pack ZIP before you distribute your data pack to your users.

Not all data packs are made to support this, and most that claim to support bundling will break if another data pack bundles the dependency. The use of version resolution features as described on the previous page combined with including the version number in the actual folder names, however, can make bundling work gracefully, even when multiple data packs bundle different versions of the same dependency.

To bundle a data pack, simply merge its data folder with your data pack's data folder. There should not be any conflicts, unless your dependency makes use of the same function tags that you make use of. To resolve these conflicts, place the entries of your dependency above your own entries in each affected function tag.

Bundling can be tedious and error-prone when done manually. However, there is not currently a general-purpose tool to bundle compatible data packs. In the near future, Lantern will publish a standard for data packs that can be used to make the version resolution and bundling processes much simpler.