Exploring A Single File Deploy on Windows

[Dan Friedman]

Greetings…

With LC 8.1 and later, we’re now using tsNet rather than libURL.  That’s fine.  However, a Windows standalone that uses tsNet cannot even launch unless tsNet.dll is in the same directory as the standalone.exe.  This makes deploying a single file on Windows impossible.  Which means you have to zip everything up and hope your client double-clicks with correct file, or use an installer. Yuck!

Now, we know that we can create a standalone that uses libURL instead of tsNet (thank you Matthias, http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode/2017-April/236013.html).  But, can you switch systems after launch?  If you can, then you could create a standalone that uses libURL -- which will launch.  During the app’s startup you could then save any DLLs, files or whatever either from custom properties or download from the net.  Once all that was done you would then switch to tsNet.  Or, even require that the user simply restart the app and it will re-launch and use tsNet.

So, when the app launches if it doesn’t find tsNet.dll in the correct location, then it continues using libURL and downloads/saves tsNet.  If it does find tsNet in the correct location, then it uses tsNet.

What do you think?  Is this possible?

-Dan