Standalone Win32 wxPython apps?

[Peter Hansen]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> Hmm, I don't really see the difference in practice between
> statically linking and installing a bunch of "private" DLLs
> that are only used by my app.  

Upgrades?  If you don't plan to distribute any new versions
of your program, or you don't mind redistributing multi-megabyte
packages just to fix a small bug, no problem.  I couldn't
probably think of other reasons (or maybe not).  Modularity
is generally good.  Less good for simple utilities.

> >> I don't know diddly about DLLs, so pardon the ignorant
> >> question: Can my DLLs be put in a private directory where my
> >> EXE can find them?  I'd rather not put anything in any public
> >> system directories.
> >
> > Yes, definitely.  Not entirely advisable if you're delivering
> > more than one program in the same manner,
> 
> Right now I don't exect to.  If I did, couldn't I make all of
> "my" apps look in the same place for "my" DLLs? I really hate
> the idea of my app putting things in "system" directories.

Not sure how you would make your app look elsewhere than in
the executable's directory for DLLs, if you need to avoid the
system directories.  Might be possible.  Anyone?

> AFAICT, there doesn't appear to be a practical way to have
> multiple versions of DLLs installed, so if you've got two apps
> that require different versions of DLLs, then one of the apps
> is screwed.

A good reason to use the everything-in-one-folder method and
not worry about it.

> > And I suppose there's the fact you'd be avoiding much of the
> > grief caused by dynamically linked apps and "DLL version hell"
> > by doing that, if you can spare the hard drive space (and most
> > users probably can these days).
> 
> Windows users... worried about drive space... ROTFL!

Who's worried?  Not me.  I thought you might be, and I didn't
want to insult you by saying I thought that would be silly.
If you don't care, then you have little reason not to go with
the options suggested.  Distributing to Windows users via
a single executable is actually worse than via an installer
(which would hide the multiple files if it's not statically
linked) since (a) they get cute icons in the Start menu, 
(b) they can uninstall without having to run Explorer and 
manually delete files, (c) you can split out parts that
should be modular (resources such as help files, etc.), and
(d) they're used to it and don't know what to do with an
executable (depending on the ignorance level of the user).

-Peter