Build an exe or dlls ?

[eys]

I been building my apps in a exe file all this years, but i'm trying to build the main program with diferent dlls to avoid overload with a large file that uses only small parts at a time.

The exe file is getting bigger and I think this is not sane.

Is dlls a solution? is hard to control this approach? what advantages or disadvanteges have this matter?

Thanks

Jose Carlos

 

[fluteplr]

How big is too big. I would have to be pretty big (more than 10 mg) before I would want to start dealing with the programming overhead of separate dlls. You are not going to save much memory unless you are going to write code to load and unload the dll's as needed. If there are part of your program that are used rarely you might want to consider compiling them as separate apps. You can then call the app as needed.

 

[eys]

I have POS system that actually have a size of 7MB. But now i'm tryng to add new (and heavy) modules to have a system with diferent versions on it but it depends of the customer requirements use one or other version (like an store version and an office-headquarters version).

You say something about compiling separate, but, for example, I have several picklist-search forms for diferent tables, do have to compile each by separately and call it every time I need? I'm a little lost.

Thanks, and excuse the spanglish

JC

 

[fluteplr]

Your spanglish is just fine. If you can separate parts of your application by functionality, say the store module and the office module. You can compile the forms etc. needed just for those modules into a seperate app, that is called by a main application.

 

[eys]

Ok, at this point I understand about separate apps, but what kind of apps? exes? dlls? or just apps? and if the answer is apps: the apps have to be uncompiled and unprotected? does this open the door for re-use by another?

 

[rgbean]

There is very little difference between a standard VFP .EXE and .APP file. The .EXE, just has some "real" startup code to locate and start the VFP runtime - the rest is just the meta data for the runtime - just like an .APP file.

To prove this to yourself, create an .APP, rename it (otherwise if the .EXE is created in the same directory the .APP will be removed), and then create an .EXE with out any other changes. If you have a binary compare program that can "sync" on the similarities, you see that it's mostly the same.

Rick