[SDL] Dynamically loading SDL dlls

[Andre Krause]

necronology at cox.net wrote:
> "if you want to have an 
> install-free application, you just want to carry all your dll's as a resource 
> with your executable."
> 
> That's how it is anyway. Just have the dll in the folder that the exe is in.
> 
> As for loading a dll off of the internet I think it's a security issue of old. There would be no file footprint on the hard drive. You could download it to the hard drive and then load it pretty easy. Then the software conventions come into play where coders are supposed to put their stuff in their own folder if it's for their program and in system area if it's for multiple programs. To be nice you are supposed to install the program so the users can easily find and remove/uninstall 
> 
> 


its a special case... for my little casual game,  i dont want any installer 
hassles (personally i hate installers, cluttering my system with dlls and 
registry stuff and arbitrary start menu entries), and i dont want to put the 
"burden" of unzipping onto casual gamers. i want a single exe download, thats 
ready for execution as soon as the download is finished.

so i would have loved to have a way to append (compressed) dlls to my exe, load 
them to memory and use them. there is a way to do that:

http://www.joachim-bauch.de/tutorials/load_dll_memory.html/en

but its so complicated i rather link statically. even if that means i can only 
use generic software for openAL.