One EXE

I was wondering about something.
Besides features like DEO etc, would would be the disadvantage of 
compiling all the files in one EXE and just distributing that rather 
than all the wfm, rep etc files separate?
The reason I'm asking this is that I'm having a bit of a problem with 
customers copying the wrong file in the wrong place. Sometimes I send 
one wfm file and tell them copy this file to location A, but then they 
copy to location B. Sometimes they make backups of the entire program on 
the computer and then either place the update in the backup or run the 
program from the backup. I've tried many times to correct this with them 
but no luck. I'm thinking of using one exe instead. It will be a lot 
less headache on my part since they can just look at the version # and 
I'll know that's the wrong file.

Any thoughts or ideas will be appreciated

In article <wYhGiS6VIHA.1096@news-server>, omar@nospam-progmatix.biz 
says...
> I was wondering about something.
> Besides features like DEO etc, would would be the disadvantage of 
> compiling all the files in one EXE and just distributing that rather 
> than all the wfm, rep etc files separate?
> The reason I'm asking this is that I'm having a bit of a problem with 
> customers copying the wrong file in the wrong place. Sometimes I send 
> one wfm file and tell them copy this file to location A, but then they 
> copy to location B. Sometimes they make backups of the entire program on 
> the computer and then either place the update in the backup or run the 
> program from the backup. I've tried many times to correct this with them 
> but no luck. I'm thinking of using one exe instead. It will be a lot 
> less headache on my part since they can just look at the version # and 
> I'll know that's the wrong file.
> 
> Any thoughts or ideas will be appreciated
> 
> Thanks

DEO can be nice, but personally I prefer to distribute the full .exe 
when I do revisions, for the exact reasons you list above.  The biggest 
disadvantage that I can see is that they have to exit the application 
before updating it, which they don't with DEO (as far as I can 
remember).  The fact that the updates are larger is a consideration, but 
not usually a major one IME.

-- 
Remove the ns_ from if replying by e-mail (but keep posts in the 

> 
> DEO can be nice, but personally I prefer to distribute the full .exe 
> when I do revisions, for the exact reasons you list above.  The biggest 
> disadvantage that I can see is that they have to exit the application 
> before updating it, which they don't with DEO (as far as I can 
> remember).  The fact that the updates are larger is a consideration, but 
> not usually a major one IME.
> 

PERFECT!
I have no issues with having to restart an application (after all, I'm 
not writing programs to launch the space shuttle, they can afford 30 sec 
downtime)

I know the updates will be a larger file, but that's also no problem in 
my case.
I think I'll do it this way instead.

In article <wYhGiS6VIHA.1096@news-server>, omar@nospam-progmatix.biz 
says...
> I was wondering about something.
> Besides features like DEO etc, would would be the disadvantage of 
> compiling all the files in one EXE and just distributing that rather 
> than all the wfm, rep etc files separate?
> The reason I'm asking this is that I'm having a bit of a problem with 
> customers copying the wrong file in the wrong place. Sometimes I send 
> one wfm file and tell them copy this file to location A, but then they 
> copy to location B. Sometimes they make backups of the entire program on 
> the computer and then either place the update in the backup or run the 
> program from the backup. I've tried many times to correct this with them 
> but no luck. I'm thinking of using one exe instead. It will be a lot 
> less headache on my part since they can just look at the version # and 
> I'll know that's the wrong file.
> 
> Any thoughts or ideas will be appreciated
> 
> Thanks
> 

Omar,

DEO provides flexibility. Compiling everything into a single .EXE is 
less flexible, but it does run faster.

If you do want to use DEO, one idea to deal with your problem would be 
to give your customers a *installer*. Let the installer be responsible 
for putting the update file in the correct location.

-- 
Geoff Wass [dBVIPS]
Montréal, Québec, Canada

.|.|.|        dBASE info at http://geocities.com/geoff_wass       |.|.|.
.|.|.| ---------------------------------------------------------- |.|.|.

>>
> 
> Omar,
> 
> DEO provides flexibility. Compiling everything into a single .EXE is 
> less flexible, but it does run faster.
> 
> If you do want to use DEO, one idea to deal with your problem would be 
> to give your customers a *installer*. Let the installer be responsible 
> for putting the update file in the correct location.
> 

I thought of that as well. This is where the one exe came up. In as much 
as I'm sending an exe which will be a setup or update file, I can just 
resend the correct exe.
That way if they copy it in the wrong place and run it it will still 
work, or if they run the older version, we can know by checking the 
version number