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To establish the dependency on Geosoft Desktop a geosoft.key file needs to be present next to your application files. The geosoft.key contains a single text line with the text "Core" (or "Core - Testing" if you have a testing version of Geosoft installed). When your program runs we use the name in the geosoft.key file to identify the installation from the registry section HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Geosoft.
If you or your user users experience an error "Geosoft: Error loading Geodist.dll.", this usually means that the geosoft.key file does not point to identify the correct registry key.
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Should you application not require any licenced capabilities from the GX API, you may also distribute your application as a completely independent application. In this case your application must install all the files from <Program Files>\Geosoft\GX Developer\apps\redist\bin right next next to the binaries that would be making use of the API externally. Your application will also need to install and/or check for the following 3rd party redistributables.
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You may also use registry settings to register specific directories where you would like temporary files and user directories will to be located. With your application you can include a file named geosoft.key, which will contain a single text line that with your application name, say "{MyApp}". In the Windows registry, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Geosoft\{MyApp}, create a key "Environment". This registry key can be used to identify the location of various files for your application:
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GEOTEMP Where all temp files will be placed.
Should you choose to configure the registry for your application, we suggest you install a standard Geosoft Desktop and inspect the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Geosoft\ to see how Geosoft configures the registry.
Should you run into DLL dependency challenges we recommend the depends.exe utility for debugging any dll dependency problems (see http://www.dependencywalker.com/ ).
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