BuddyPress Template (Pack) is an attempt to make it easier for people to understand how to get started to adapt their theme for BuddyPress. As it’s intended to be a single-use thing, it doesn’t make sense to go into BuddyPress core.
I don’t think I follow. Unless you are using the default BP theme you have to use the other plugin also. Unless you are assuming 99% of users are using the default theme, why not just make one plugin instead of two?
Alan, you don’t have to use the BP Default OR the other plugin to create your own theme. You can create whatever theme you want if you know how. Just tag your style.css with ‘buddypress’ and it will show as a buddypress ready theme. The assumption is that you’ll know how to build that template.
I would say that most people don’t really know how to go about building a template from scratch yet, but as Buddypress gets bigger and more documentation is available, then it will become more commonplace.
I don’t think it is possible without the plugin. I’ve copied all the BP Template template folders over to my theme folder, but it doesn’t work unless I active the plugin.
@alanchrishughes To create a BuddyPress-compatible theme, either
1. Create a child theme of bp-default theme, OR
2. Create a WP theme which is BP-ready, OR
3. Download and install a WP theme, install/activate BP Template Pack plugin then go through Appearance > BP Compatibility process.
Thats what I’m saying though, it doesn’t seem to be possible to create a “BP-ready” theme unless you install the rest of Buddypress (BP Template).
@alanchrishughes – the plugin (Buddypress template pack) is simply a utility tool, it’s not required.
What does it do? From what i gather from your comment above, you tried to copy the template folders from Tpack, but if you look inside your theme, the folders are actually empty, which is why it’s not working 
The plugin copies the folders from the bp-default theme (inside the buddypress plugin)
So – you either need to turn on (activate) template pack and go through the configure stuff (once done you can deactivate the template pack) or, copy over the files manually from within plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/dp-default
If you choose to not keep the template pack active, you may also need to copy over the functions into your themes functions.php (https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/bp-template-pack/trunk/bpt-functions.php) as it has some almost required stuff (like registering the “add friends” buttons)
