Can a Visual Basic 6 program be made into a portable app?
Otis
Mike Williams
> If so, what is the procedure? Thank you.
Depends what you mean by "portable app". Do you mean something that
can be copied onto a CD or a USB memory stick and then run straight
from the device? If so then the answer is "Yes", but the details of
how to do it depend on exactly what your app is doing. You can of
course do it using a commercial packaging app (MoleBox for example) or
you can do it for free if you use a sort of "XCopy deployment" package
where you place your compiled VB exe and all of its required support
files in a folder on the memory stick or whatever, together with a
suitable manifest. If you use only the standard "built into the VB
runtime" Controls (Command Button, Label, PictureBox, Frame. ListBox,
Timer etc) then you don't need a manifest or any support files and you
can simply put just the compiled VB6 exe onto the memory stick,
because the VB runtime ships with the OS right up to and including
Win7 and will already be present. If your program uses other things
(RichTextBox, CommonDialog Control, third party Controls, etc or
anything that needs to be copied to and / or would normally need to be
registered on the system) then you will need to create a suitable
manifest and either include it as a separate file in the same folder
as your compiled exe and your support files or alternatively embed the
manifest into your compiled exe. The manifest causes the system to use
the copies of the support files that are present in the same folder as
your exe (or in a predetermined subfolder) without them needing to be
registered on your system.
Mike
Mike Williams
> If so, what is the procedure? Thank you.
By the way, further to my previous response, I forgot to mention that
the XCopy (RegFree COM) deployment method I mentioned won't work for
ActiveX and it doesn't work at all in Win98 or earlier.
Mike