Microsoft Visual Studio includes a very useful utility called Depends.EXE, which scans EXEs and reports useful information on all dependent modules (DLLs, etc).
We’ve been using Depends.EXE for many years now, but only recently realized that it’s actually a free tool, which can be downloaded by anyone, including our clients!
But, most of our end-users lack the technical expertise to use Depends.EXE. That’s why we built J-Depends.
J-Depends is a Clarion template. Developers simply add it to their Clarion APPs and recompile. When end-users run these compiled APPs, J-Secure can automatically run Depends.EXE.
The beauty of J-Depends is that this happens behind the scenes. End-users never see Depends.EXE. J-Depends simply does its magic, and your end-users can then simply email you a text file which contains all the Depends.EXE information!
How do I implement it?
All you need to do is install J-Depends, and add the “J-Depends Global Extension Template” to your Clarion APP. You can set J-Depends to generate the logfile every time your software starts, or only when your EXE is started with the “/DEPENDS” command line parameter.
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Useful Links
- Download J-Depends
- Download Dependency Walker
- Download Demo Application
- View Online Documentation
- View Video Tutorials
- Other products by StrategyOnline
- The Blog
Frequently Asked Questions
J-Depends
Q. I'm assuming in a multi-dll application, you put this in the EXE and don't have to put it in the DLL's.
A. Yes. But it will still report on the DLLs, because they are called / loaded by the EXE.
J-Depends will simply not work. It falls over gracefully, and your software will continue to run as per normal.
J-Depends will not provide "more" information if you compile your APP with debugging turned on.
I compiled the demo APP in Debug Mode, and in Release Mode, and both J-Depends logfiles came in at 255 KB. I then compared the logfiles and the only differences were things like the amount of memory being used by the EXE, etc.
No, that's the beauty of J-Depends. The analysis of your EXE is done purely on the EXE, so there is no additional load / footprint on your software.
The Dependency Walker EXE can be download from dependencywalker.com, or directly from here.
This information is published on the Developer Tools page.
Clarion
From Windows Vista, you may experience problems running certain Clarion accessory installers, whereby they will not be able to detect your installed versions of Clarion. Please see the following link for more information, as well as a workaround:
If you are experiencing problems compiling our example applications using Clarion 5.5.h, please take a look at the following article:
DebugView is a free application that you can download from Microsoft, which enables you to view debug output from our products. This can be very helpful in tracking down problems.
By default, our products do not generate debug messages, so you will not see anything in DebugView. To enable debug messages, simpy tick the "Send messages to DebugView" option found on each of products' Global Extension Templates, as shown below.
Once you have turned on the "Send messages to DebugView" option, recompile and run your APP. You should then see messages appearing in DebugView.
Our 3rdParty documentation is now available from within the Clarion 7 IDE.
After installing any of our Clarion 3rdParty products, you can now access our help system as follows...
From within the Clarion 7 IDE, simply click on the "Help" menu, then click on "Accessory", then "StrategyOnline". Then click on "Online Product Documentation".
