MQL5 Program Packer – script MetaTrader 5

This script allows you to assemble a zip-file of your MQL5-program with all dependencies automatically.

The dependencies are:

• included source files via #include directive (both modes of absolute (<>) and relative (“”) references are supported);
• icons linked by #property icon directive;
• resources (images, sounds, and other types) embedded by #resource directive;

The script is based on a file scanner initially published in the article MQL Parsing by Means of MQL.

In order the script to work properly, user should make a simple yet important preparation step.

Create the file makelink.bat in the MQL5/Files folder with the following command and run it:

mklink /J MQL5 "..\..\MQL5\"

The file is provided (bound) with the script but bears txt-extension because bat-files are prohibited in MQL5 resources. You should copy makelink.txt to makelink.bat manually.

The command will create virtual pseudo-folder “MQL5” (so called file system junction point) inside real MQL5/Files folder. The pseudo-folder is actually a link/jump to the real MQL5 folder, accessible from the MQL5 sandbox. Do not mix up the real MQL5 folder and “MQL5” link (it’s usually marked with a shortcut overlay on the icon).

The first occurence of “MQL5” in the abovementioned command is the pseudonym. You can choose another one at the expence of non-standard directory structure in the resulting ZIP-files (top-level folder in the ZIPs will have this name). The second occurence of “MQL5” in the command is the name of the real MQL5 folder – this part should be kept intact. Run the command in the MQL5/Files folder.

MQL5 sandbox access from MQL5/Files folder via junction point (symlink)

The pseudo-folder “MQL5” link is just a special file, you can remove it freely if you don’t need it anymore, just make sure you’re deleting the link inside MQL5/Files folder, not the real MQL5 folder in the terminal data path.

Input parameters

• string VirtualRootFolder – the name of the pseudo-folder link, “MQL5” by default; you can use another name, for example, “Sources”, but then it becomes the top-level folder in the resulting archives, so you’ll be unable to unzip sources inplace preserving standard MT hierarchy of folders with MQL5 top-level folder;
• string MainSourceFile – the pathname of MQL5 program you want to packup, by default it’s “Scripts/mql5pack.mq5”, which means that the script will pack itself; the pathname is from inside MQL5 folder, don’t start it with MQL5 itself; for example, to pack MACD based EA example specify “Experts\Examples\MACD\MACD Sample.mq5”; back-slashes and forward-slashes are supported interchangeably;
• string PackedFile – the name of resulting archive, by default it’s empty, which means that it will have the same name as the program but appended with zip-extension (for example, mql5pack.mq5.zip);
• string ExceptionListFilename – the name of a file with exception list of folders and files, which should be excluded from the archive regardless to dependencies, by default it contains “mql5pack.txt” with example of standard header folders/files installed along with MetaTrader.

The zip will contain full structure of subfolders and files in your MQL5, which are referenced from your MQL5 program.

The script utilizes the ZIP-library published in the article Handling ZIP Archives in Pure MQL5, but with minor fixes and improvements.

Here is an example of log:

Files marked by ‘+’ are added, marked by ‘-‘ are skipped as they are from the exceptions list.