Jeremy Coulter bemoaned:
> SO, can I do the above slightly differently so I can just distribute the
> EXE without have to also send out the runtime BPL's too?
> Or am I better to use some 3rd party plugin tool?
I have done some experimenting in this area of distribution and have a few
observarions that you may be intersted in.
If you want to do a purely delphi based distribution using minimal packages
you have only one solution available. The only structure that seems to work
easily is to create one minimal executable, one (or perhaps more) shared
library package containg all of the VCL, ADO and other run time DCU's you
need to share between the executable and other packages, and N modular
packages that utilise the shared library and perform some sorrt of
registration function(s) when loaded.
I prefer this design as it allows careful control of what goes into the
library and is shared, and what is not and is duplicated when needed into
each of the packages.
The down side is that the library package is going to be big, as it will
need large chunks of the VCL and other support code and will probably end up
about the same szie of the VCL packages anyway.
Going with a third party plug in solution, or indeed on of your own, means
that reuse of any base library code is complicated, oe impossible. If the
design of a generic plug in one then it will be purely DLL based with simple
API's that don't allow for Delphi shared libraries, only shared DLL's. If it
is a Delphi based plugin design that you are just getting some one else to
do the plumbing.
The decision between Delphi based packages, or old style DLL (or COM ) based
is going to hinge on if the extentions are doing GUI extentions to the
application, or purely lofic extentions. The GUI stuff works lost cleaner if
you let Delphi do the work, and the logic extention are smallest and
cleanest if they are minimal DLL's.
After looking at all this and doing some work I decided that the best way
foward was one honking big EXE (well 9MiB isn't all that big) and internal
code to determine what stuff the user had access to. Makes life very simple
to manage, is smaller that lots of packages, and means that updates are one
compressed files that needs to be installed.
Cheers, Max.
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