Best practice for plugin dependencies

I've written several plugins for shortcodes. All of them obviously depend on shortcode-core.

However, when testing code I try to install the minimum number of plugins, and I forget to install shortcode-code.

What is the best practice for ensuring that a plugin which depends on another plugin installs the dependency first?

I have searched using 'grav dependencies' and come across references to the file .dependencies but there does not seem to be any easily available description about what .dependencies should contain.

In addition, there is a post saying that .dependencies is a hold-over from a previous development system, and that indicates it is not the best way forward.

I looked up google-maps, a plugin I've used that I know depends shortcode core, and saw that it uses the plugin blueprint as per Ole's comment.

Thanks everyone.

I missed the reference in Plugin Blueprints.