Hi All

Is it possible in .Net to compile dependant dll's into an app or other dll without having the source of the dll's?

In Delphi we had dll's called Bpl's and you could compile it into you app or dll.

Any Body?...

wayne wrote:

Any Body?...

I suppose it's possible with reflection, though you might still have to create some kind of stub/interface to program against until the real assembly can be bound at runtime.

That's all just a little theory of course.

That's a good idea, but one that would require a new linker to perform. I've not heard of one yet, but I would put it past some Delphi hacker to put one together, especially now that Delphi 8 is out with .NET support.

I miss my Delphi days. Frankly, things were easier, and the number of available controls and other code was great. I loved that it all compiled into a single .EXE.

It's clear that Microsoft learned a lot from Delphi when they created the .NET environment. I'd read that several key Borland people jumped to MS during the early stages. The .NET environment is worlds ahead of the old Visual Studio 6, but the applications still have to live in the Windows environment.

Looking forward to Whidbey and Avalon, and a Yukon server.

Hey, Wayne check out this link. It might what you're looking for, or at least close enough to help. Let me know...

Assembly Linking

Jeff...

Ooooo.....[url]tag love once again...

Thanks jeff. - will have a look.

How do you do the URL tag thingy?

Edit -

Looking forward to Whidbey and Avalon, and a Yukon server.

I read (will look for URL) that M$ is going to push fat cleints instead of Thin cleints because thin cleints is a threat to the existance of M$ Windows. - Thin cleints does not need a Win OS. So customers don't need to buy latest Win OS. No customer need, no purchases, no money...bye bye M$.

Hope that i am not doing all thiss thin cleint stuff for nothing...

Found the artical - not official M$ Stuff but give it a read - it's very good. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Joel Spolsky has caused quite a stir in blogspace with this piece. He touches on the thin vs thick issue and his view of Microsoft's view on the subject. Alot of the blog responses and comments give more information about the debate.

Personally, looking at Indigo I think that it's obvious that MS is embracing the web as a transport mechanism, and not a presentation platform (that's what XAML is for) - the best of both worlds (at least for them). They're attacking the deficiencies of traditional thick-clients one at a time, thus Click-Once, the Updater Block and functionality, etc, etc so that there will be less and less reasons to use traditional HTML-based thin-client technologies as your platform of choice - thus locking you into their approach to the future...

Personally, I think it makes sense, although I wish MS were more open about standards in this space (Joel's opinions notwithstanding) simply because HTML was never meant to be a presentation language. Sure, they've tacked on presentation-style extensions (CSS 2, DHTML, etc) but it will never be the best thing for presentation, not to mention the fact that wasn't even developed to be a programming platform. A complete server roundtrip and page refresh for simple event handling? Come on...It simply was never meant to be what it's being used for.

In terms what we're wasting time with, it's simply a matter of using what's available to us, but planning for the future. Everybody better make sure that at least their presentation logic is separated out from the rest of their code, or the next generation of development tools, languages, platforms, and their associated migration paths are going to be verrrry difficult to figure out.

Jeff...

BTW, re: the url tag, you can RTFM here. Kindly pointed to me by Otis, when I asked the same question.

wayne wrote:

Found the artical - not official M$ Stuff but give it a read - it's very good. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Heh...the timing, oh the timing...

Frankly, things were easier, and the number of available controls and other code was great

Easier?....only when writing a fat cleint.

I never had to work with all these bloody Com and activeX dll that have to be shipped with your exe. I have only been working with these damm dll's for 2-3 weeks and i can already see that they are going to be (if not already) a pain in my A##.

I found that Delphi/Borland programmers was more eiger to share their code and components and libs with other programmers but most M$ programmers want money $$$?

Another thing that i love about the old Delphi is the advantage that it gave us when we had to convert to .Net. Took me litterly 1 week to get familiar with the syntax for VB.net and C# and maybe another week to learn the namespaces. I guess we can thank. Mr. Anders Hejlsberg

Some interesting articals: Conspiracy Theory: MS's .Net IS Borland's Product Delphi/.NET Comparison

I hope that Borland can regain the market share that they lost, but it does seem that Borland is currently under some Shitty management.