User Extensions/Externals

[J. Landman Gay]

Paul D. DeRocco wrote:
>> From: J. Landman Gay
>>
>> I don't think so. As far as I know, nothing's changed in the way
>> externals work in years. There have been some new ways of forcing them
>> to load ("new" as of a few years ago,) but the underlying principle of
>> it is the same as always: externals only load when a stack is first
>> opened, and the path to the external must be correct. Now how you manage
>> that can be done several ways, from simple to complex, but they all do
>> the same thing in the end.
> 
> I noticed a change when I moved to 3.5. Formerly, before building the
> standalones, I had to remove the dummy stack that contained the external
> from memory, or it wouldn't work when I started the standalone. Now I don't
> have to do that any more. I don't understand what's going on under the hood,
> but that made building standalones easier.

The dummy stack trick is just a clever work-around to allow you to load 
an external on demand. It isn't required. It sounds like what changed 
was the standalone builder rather than the way externals work, but I'm 
not sure either how that works under the hood.

Sometimes I wish that dummy stack trick hadn't been announced. It's very 
handy when you need it for some reason in particular, but it causes a 
lot of confusion too. I never use it.


-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com