Ship report designer as DLL/BPL
I've got a registered version of FastReports 2.5 VCL. I don't want to ship FR6.BPL because it has too many dependencies, so I compile all that code into my application EXE instead. I don't currently include FR_Desgn (the report designer) because it adds about 500k to my EXE size.
I'm wondering if I can create a package with only FR_Desgn.pas and build a BPL file with just that module. Then load the BPL at run-time using LoadPackage().
It seems like this would work, unless FR_Desgn has a lot of external dependencies also and uses a lot of static/global variables.
Has anyone had any luck trying something like this?
Looking at the source code for FR_Class.pas, it seems like all I need to do is set "frDesignerClass" to a valid pointer in order to enable to report designer at run-time.
I'm wondering if I can create a package with only FR_Desgn.pas and build a BPL file with just that module. Then load the BPL at run-time using LoadPackage().
It seems like this would work, unless FR_Desgn has a lot of external dependencies also and uses a lot of static/global variables.
Has anyone had any luck trying something like this?
Looking at the source code for FR_Class.pas, it seems like all I need to do is set "frDesignerClass" to a valid pointer in order to enable to report designer at run-time.
Comments
it will be dependant on what ever controls or additional librarys are installed.
fr bde components etc.
the approach i like is to copy the datamodule and make the designer a stand alone exe and keep designing separate from the app itself.