Getting an Application Ready for Retail Release

ID: Q45692

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) versions 3.0, 3.1

SUMMARY

This article describes the steps you should take when moving your application from DEBUG to RELEASE mode. This article contains a section for Windows hosted tools, and a section for non-Windows hosted tools.

USING WINDOWS HOSTED TOOLS

Visual C++

Change the Build Mode to Release by choosing Project from the Options menu. The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) modifies the proper switches and will use the custom options selected by the user.

QuickC for Windows

QuickC for Windows has a procedure similar to Visual C++.

USING NON-WINDOWS HOSTED TOOLS

Code File Changes

Change the MAKE file compile line from something such as the following
cl -W2 -Od -FPi -Zpei myapp.c
to the following:
cl -W2 -Os -Fpi myapp.c
NOTE: The -Zi switch will not put in line information for CodeView for Windows (CVW), and the -FPi switch will use the floating-point coprocessor if it is present.

Remove the /co switch from the linker command line options.

Remove any debugging code, and/or flip any debugging switches present in the application to off.

Checking The User Interface

Verify that the application will work without the mouse, making sure that the keyboard interface is all set up, especially in dialog boxes.

Check all fonts used for spacing. NOTE: This step is not necessary if you are using TrueType fonts.

Preparing Documentation

Starting with Windows version 3.0, the internal screen capture command can be used to take screen shots of the application. Press PRINT SCREEN or SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN on older systems, and Windows will copy the screen as a bitmap into the clipboard. The bitmap can then be pasted into the a word processing application to create the written documentation.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbcode kb16bitonly GenSDK
Version : WINDOWS:3.0,3.1
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto