Current Solutions to single EXE

[Bill_Marcy]

Are there any solutions to having a bunch of libs along with my windows exe that have to be distributed?

Running on a Mac development machine, first time I have set foot in the windows world, and it appears there are 6 or 7 separate files that people have to have along with my .exe file. It is so inelegant.

Any solutions?

[Norman_Palardy]

Make an installer and have it put all the required files in the right places
Distribute the installer

You may find a Windows packager that cane turn it all into a single exe but an installer is the right answer as far as MS is concerned since it makes it easy to install and remove

The now ancient “single file format” that REALStudio / REALbasic used way back when was a bit of a hack and was abandoned years ago because it was not supportable (see this link)

Repeated discussions with the DLL loader team from Microsoft cemented the understanding that continuing with the current architecture would be increasingly problematic. We decided to no longer fight against the operating system with regards to handling plugins. The DLLs will be present on the disk, next to the executable so that the OS DLL loader can handle loading them instead of requiring us to mimic the loader functionality. This resolves all of the issues in a consistent way, with as little chance for failure as possible.

[Bill_Marcy]

Thanks Norman, I am searching google and there seems to be a plethora of USB installers for windows, but I am thinking that is so I can install the entire windows OS.

Is there a freeware/shareware/commercial utility that will make a windows installer file out of my .exe and the requisite libraries on a mac that you know of?

[Norman_Palardy]

innosetup

nothing that makes a Windows installer on a mac though

[anon93744516]

But you can code sign for Windows executables on a Mac.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

[Bill_Marcy]

Thanks Scott, didn’t know that needed to be done either.