TDM Rerun #15: Many Faces Of An Application

That all sounds easy, but how can we combine the windows (forms-based) aspect of an application with something completely different, for example an SvCom-based service application? The problem here is that the GUI part of an application uses forms while the SvCom service is based on another Application object, based on the SvCom_NTService unit. How can we combine the GUI Application.Initialize (where Application is an object in the Forms unit) with a service Application.Initialize (where Application is an object in the SvCom_NTService unit)? By fully qualifying each object, of course.

- Many Faces Of An Application, The Delphi Magazine 107, July 2004

In the 2004 July issue I described an approach that allows the programmer to put multiple application front-ends inside one .exe file by manually tweaking the project’s .dpr file. This is the technique I’m still using in my programs. For example, most of the services I write can be configured by starting the exe with the /config switch.

Links: article (PDF, 126 KB), source code (ZIP, 1 MB).