Distributing your PPL applications.

You are now done testing and debugging your application. It is time to distribute it to your clients or sell it. PPL offers a multitude of ways to do this.

The first method of distribution is to create an executable file (.exe), pack all your files in a zip file and send it over. The second method is to distribute the PPL compiled file (.ppc) file. It is a compressed and encrypted bytecode version of your source code. If you do this you will need to distribute the PPL.EXE application that you can rename to your liking ex: MyApp.exe. You will now need to rename the MyApp.ppc file to Autorun.ppc. PPL looks for Autorun.ppl or Autorun.ppc file at launch time.

Let's review each method one by one:

Create an executable.

There are two ways to generate an executable file in PPL. First you need Pro version to do this. You can use the PIDE by selecting Run / Make Executable. You have a couple choices here:

1. Type of executable you want to generate.

Desktop PC executable.
PocketPC 2000, 2002 compatible executable.
Windows Mobile 2003, 2003se and 2005 compatible executable.

2. Icon file. Allow you to select an icon for your executable file.

3. Use compressed library. This will use the compressed libraries to build your executable. Compressed libraries are about 3 times smaller than normal library files but they can be a little slower to load on some machines.

The second way is to use the main PPL interface on the PocketPC. Here the options you can set:

1. Root file. This is the PPL file to create an executable with.

2. Exe type. Select the executable format to generate. These are the same settings as on the PIDE above.

3. Compressed runtimes. Same as the PIDE.

Once your executable is created you will need to include the external support files that will be used by your application. That is bitmap image files, sound files, text files, data files, etc... It is good practice to keep all files within the same folder or in seperate folders within the root folder of your application.

Extra files that will need to be distributed with your application:

gsgetfile.dll

If you plan on using the GetFile() or PutFile() functions, you might want to distrbute this file along with your application. This .dll file will provide a nice file dialog selection that is an improvement over the standard Windows Mobile or PocketPC OS default dialog.

sqlite_pc.dll or sqlite_ppc.dll

If you use any SQLite functions within your application, these two files will need to be included in the root folder of your application. Be careful because there are two seperate sqlite_dll.dll files. One is for the PC and the other is for the PocketPC. The SQL.PPL library file will load the correct one depending on the version of the executable. It's preferable to provide the correct one for each platform.

vgarom.fnt

This is the default font used by the GameAPI. If you make a game or an application that uses the GameAPI you will need to include this file in the root folder of your application else the FPS and default fonts won't appear on the screen.