How PowerBuilder builds the project
When PowerBuilder builds your application project:
-
If you selected Rebuild: Full, PowerBuilder regenerates all
the objects in the libraries. -
If you selected Prompt for Overwrite, PowerBuilder displays
a message box asking for confirmation before overwriting the
executable file and each dynamic library.
To create the executable file you specified, PowerBuilder
searches through your target and copies into the executable file the
compiled versions of referenced objects from the libraries in the
target’s library search path that are not specified as dynamic
libraries. For more details, see How
PowerBuilder searches for objects.
PowerBuilder creates a dynamic library for each of the libraries
you specified for the target and maintains a list of these library
files. PowerBuilder maintains the unqualified file names of the
dynamic library files; it does not save the path name.
PowerBuilder does not copy objects that are not referenced in
the application to the executable file, nor does it copy objects to
the executable file from libraries you declared to be dynamic
libraries. These objects are linked to the target at runtime and are
not stored in the executable file.
What happens at runtime
When an object such as a window is referenced in the
application, PowerBuilder first looks in the executable file for the
object. If it does not find it there, it looks in the dynamic library
files that are defined for the target. For example, if you specified
that a dynamic library should be generated from test.pbl, PowerBuilder
looks for test.pbd or test.dll at runtime. The dynamic library files
must be in the search path. If PowerBuilder cannot find the object in
any of the dynamic library files, it reports a runtime error.