One big executable or many small DLL's?

Question

Over the years my application has grown from 1MB to 25MB and I expect it to grow further to 40, 50 MB. I don\'t use DLL\'s, but put everything in this one big executable.

Answer 1

A single executable has a huge positive impact on maintainability. It is easier to debug, deploy (size issues aside) and diagnose in the field. As you point out, it completely sidesteps DLL hell.

The most straightforward solution to your problem is to have two compilation modes, one that builds a single exe for production and one that builds lots of little DLLs for development.