Purchasing a copy of Liberty BASIC allows you to compile your code into a standalone application that can be run by others who do not have the Liberty BASIC language installed on their computers. Click here to purchase a copy of Liberty BASIC.
Liberty BASIC can automate this process for you. First, load the code for your application into the Liberty BASIC editor. Next, select "Create Application" from the "Run" menu.
You'll be presented with a dialog that allows you to name your new application.
Use the "Browse" button to open a filedialog that allows you to select or create a folder for your new application and to type a name for it as well. Do not attempt to create your new application in the Liberty BASIC directory, or you'll get an error message. Click the "Create" button to create your standalone application.
If you check the box labeled "Open Explorer on Application," Windows Explorer will open to the folder that contains your new application, so you can see all of the files needed for distribution. If your program needs extra data files, bitmaps, or other files, copy them from their current location and paste them into your application folder. Creating an application is nondestructive. You can use it repeatedly to create new versions of your application to the same location and it will not overwrite or erase your other data files, folders, etc.
To run your application, double click on the EXE file. The application folder also contains a collection of files with extensions DLL and SLL. All of these files must be distributed with your program. You may want to place all of these files into a zip archive and copy them to a disk, or upload them to a webpage on the internet, so that others can get copies to install on their computers.
The icon used by the runtime engine is the Liberty BASIC torch. If you want to change this, use the Icon Editor.
If you want complete control over this process, you can create an application yourself by making a TKN from your code, then copying all of the runtime files to a separate folder, and renaming the runtime engine. For details, see Creating a Tokenized File and Using the Runtime Engine.
Troubleshooting: If you created a shortcut on your desktop for starting Liberty BASIC this can confuse Liberty BASIC about location it should be writing files, and this can cause an error when trying to create an application. If you get an error when creating an application, make sure you are launching Liberty BASIC from the Start menu.