Compiling a Large VB Project

Hello willisp !

It depends on what you have to "share".

1. For example if you have to share an arithmetic function you should use a dll (faster because in same process).

2. If you have to share a group of controls used often you should consider using an ocx (user control).

3. If you have to share a copmlete project which offers services to other apps asynchonous you should consider using an ActiveX-Exe.

Set the project type to "binary compatibity" to avoid unnecessary compiling when the interface hasn't changed.

v.k.

Hi VK,

Thanks for the comments, but I noticed that the "binary compatibility" is disabled and I cannot select it.

Try compiling it from the command line to free up the memory used to "draw" the VB environment.  do it as follows.

<Path to VB.EXE> /make <path of project to compile> /out <path to log file>

eg

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\vb6.exe" /make "C:\test\test.vbp" /out c:\compile.log

"just to compile" - do you mean build?  There's not much you can do about that because it needs to build each of your objects.  Get a (much) faster PC is the unhelpful suggestion.

If you mean to start the program, you could try starting without full compile each time. (F5 instead of cntrl-F5 or in options).

If you're building an exe to test it, then try testing it from within the IDE instead (even if it's an ActiveX Exe)

... "binary compatibility" is disabled and I cannot select it.

Binary compatibility is only allowed on ActiveX DLLs and ActiveX EXE projects.  I'm assuming yours is a Standard EXE.

Almost all the projects I work on keep all the forms and classes separate.  In addition, I never have more than 10 forms in one project.  I compile all into DLLs. My forms would be compiled into a User Interface (UI) dll and the classes into your Business Objects (BO) DLL.  In this way, if I need to fix something, I am only changing small parts of a whole.  Also, if I ever decide to change my interface, say from VB forms to a Web interface, my objects and business logic are self contained and ready to go.

There's a product I can suggest for this called VB-Build.  You set up the parameters of your project one time, and whenever you need to compile after that it will automatically re-build the objects that have changed and/or any dependencies.  Its quite fast and prevents the beating of opening a project, compiling, opening another, compiling, and so on.

www.vb-build.com 

Note that I don't work for the guys that make this product, we just use it at my office and its quite good for this kind of thing.

Eric