Hi,
I need some advice on handling third party software components for an application that's deployed on 3 manufacturing machines in different locations, and used on desktop PCs.
The machines employ lots of COTS hardware equipment integrated to the one PC, to keep things simple, I'll only mention 2 items of hardware, but there is probably around 8.
The best example is the ADLINK digital IO PCI card and the Aerotech Stages, both products have .dll files used to access functions of the 3rd party hardware, these dll's would have found their way onto both the development PC and the machine via a driver supplied with the hardware. Aerotech .dll's are already in the always included list of the build properties of the application, the ADLINK .dll's are not.
The paths of the ADLINK dll's are:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ADLINK\DAQPilot\DAQPilotLVPNP.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\DAQPilotEngine.dll
I would like users to run my application on a desktop PC without the hardware connected, so they can use features that don't required the hardware. When these users attempt to run the executable at present, they are promted for the missing ADLINK dll's.
How should I solve the problem? I'm thinking the DAQPilotEngine.dll must be in that windows folder for a reason. Is placing a copy of the .dll inside my project a feasible solution? I intend to build more machines soon.
Brian
