At 08:12 PM 6/01/2004 +0100, you wrote:

>Helen,
>
>Is this unit still needed with IBO 3.4 ?

Yes, for now; unless you want to do the "full compatibility" thing and
rename fbclient.dll to gds32.dll.

Fb 1.5 is now somewhat "at odds" with the generic client concept -
purposely, of course. The IB principle is to assume that your application
is the only one on the system. The Firebird concept is that installing the
firebird client shouldn't interfere with any known or unknown IB client
that's is installed on the client machine.

IB never had to read an environment variable variable or the Registry to
determine how to locate the name or location of the client library (and
still doesn't). If you force Fb 1.5 to be the same way, you have to rename
the firebird client and overwrite any existing gds32.dll in the system
directory. That's not good.

The new Fb 1.5 setup does all it can to isolate its client library from the
need to break (or be broken by) IB installations.

The right way (as Nando mentioned) is to do a proper client install so that
the FIREBIRD variable and the Registry key are installed. Products such as
IBO, that need to support either IB, Fb 1 or Fb 1.5 are going to need to
read them from now on.

Let's not overlook the fact that the fbclient install mechanism has been on
shifting sand for the past few weeks. What worked for RC6 won't work for
RC7 and what worked for RC7 won't work for RC8. RC8 still has bugs and
gotchas and the full range of options is still fairly unclear.

I haven't discussed this matter with Jason (it all changed over the
holiday) but I'd be very surprised if he doesn't develop an alternative
strategy for IBO to find the client library, once the Fb 1.5 client stuff
gets bedded down. I'll have to do this for Kylix as well.

Helen