Ok,

Well I have a question..

I've been messing around with Visual Basic for a while... and I've now made something nice...
But my question is, how do I make the exe file run without it requiring a lot of DLL files, such as "msvbvm60.dll".
Not everbody has this file so I have to distribute it with the package, blablabla, I dont want that...

Is there a way to compile it within the EXE file?
If so? How?

Thanks!!

Yes, it is possible. Basically, you have to convert the DLL into a staticly linked library. (don't ask me for further details; I don't use VB.)

But do you *really* want to do that? Do you want "hello world" to be several MB? You're going to pay the size cost as long as you're using VB, whether as increased exe size or as accompanying DLLs.

VB depends on the DLL files to make the small .exe programs that it can produce...

VB (The program) is betting on the fact that your end user will have the right DLL files to run...

Their are two ways to make sure that you are producing a compatiable program...



One would be to the package feature included in VB. This will produce a set-up program which will install your designed program and the needed DLL files that are needed to run it.

The other way is to make the .exe file in a lower version of VB such as VB 3 or 4. I've found this to work well for small stand-alone programs b/c the newer versoins of VB require alot more DLL's to simply run a little "Hello World" program.


Of course you'll always need a few files such as vbrun300 etc... But, these things are included in newer versions of Windows so you can be safe...

Alternately, of course, you could recode everything in C, and get a smaller executable, better compatibility, and higher performance. ;)

So does anyone know how to statically add them or whatever?

Originally posted by hypernatic.net
So does anyone know how to statically add them or whatever?

i used to program vb and i'll look for my notes on it (i can't remember how), but like it was said before....why would you want to??? your executable will be very large and depending on which controls you use it can become a resource hog...

Here's two commercial solutions:

VB-PowerWrap
http://www.moonlight-software.com

Fusion
http://www.bit-arts.com