I low-key wish they would open source the compiler so the open source community could make an attempt at rebuilding the IDE. I have heard they cannot open source all of it, wish they would open what they can.
It was an installer, installed all the DLLs, which if you bundled with your application, meant you were golden to run it as-is. Though you are technically correct that you need them, I think my statement still stands: You just need to bundle the required DLLs and OCX files and you're golden.
That's not very comforting for the dozens of times (that I personally experienced) that the developer didn't make sure it was "golden" and instead left a headache on the end user.
As long as you used the bundled installer, everything worked. If you didn’t, you’d need to bundle extra components but, IIRC, component selection was automatic - any DLLs, VBXs, and OCXs used would be detected and bundled.
I think the installer itself was licensed from a third party.
