LiveCode Forums.

Since the IDE loads the zip library when it starts up, you don't need to do that during development. The external isn't automatically loaded in a standalone though. I haven't used the standalone builder's method of inclusion (I'm old-school) so I assumed it would handle that for you, but it doesn't look like it's working. You can try the old way, which is to set the externals in a startup handler. In the IDE, the startup handler will never run so it does no harm. In the standalone, it will load the zip external.

on startup
set the externals of this stack to "<path/to/revzip/bundle>"
end startup

Another way to set it without using a script is to just put the relative path into the Externals pane of the stack inspector. I don't know if that would interfere with the IDE or not, but probably not.

Wow. That did it. I thought I already tried that, but I decided to just try it again. Sure enough, I tried to load the externals in the openstack before, which obviously doesn't work. I moved it to startup and it works flawlessly. Apparently, the dll wasn't set up to load fast enough by default before my program needed it, so setting it up "the old way" is the only way it would work.

Thanks Jacque for being the only one who could figure this out.

Oh good. I only knew the answer because I had the same problem some years ago. Since externals will only load when the stack opens, setting them in an openstack handler is too late -- the stack is already open by then. So startup is the only place it works if it needs to run in a mainstack.