Reading PowerBuilder libraries

pb-diff opens .pbl and .pbd files, and libraries appended to a built .exe or .dll, without PowerBuilder and without ORCA. It works out the flavour from the file. Unicode libraries (PowerBuilder 10 and later) are what v1 certifies; ANSI libraries (PowerBuilder 5 to 9) are read on a best-effort basis and are outside the certified scope.

What this is for

Comparing two releases of an application normally starts with exporting both, which needs a licensed IDE, takes time, and produces thousands of files nobody wanted. pb-diff reads the library itself: give the two .pbl files to New Comparison and the Compare Summary enumerates their entries and compares them one by one, exactly as it would compare two folders of exports. The same applies to a .pbd or to the library inside a shipped .exe, which is useful when the built application is all you have.

What is inside a library

Each entry belongs to one of three kinds:

A library also carries metadata of its own: the header comment, the format version and the creation time. pb-diff-cli info prints it.

Compiled entries are not decompiled

This is the honest limit of direct library access, and it matters most when you are comparing .pbd files or a library extracted from an .exe.

A .pbl normally holds both the source and the compiled form of each object. In that case nothing is lost: pb-diff compares the source and you get the usual section-by-section result.

A .pbd, and a library inside a built executable, usually holds only the compiled form. pb-diff does not interpret P-code and will not reconstruct source from it. For such an entry you get its name, type, size and modification time, a comparison of its metadata or of its raw bytes against the other side, and its raw bytes on request. You do not get a hierarchy, a script, a line-by-line difference or a merge. "This object differs" is the most a compiled-only compare can tell you, and it can occasionally tell you that about an object whose source never changed, because a recompilation need not be byte-identical. When you need to know what changed, compare the .pbl files or the exports.

In a library comparison, a double-click opens a source diff only when both sides have source. A compiled or resource row instead explains that only metadata or byte comparison is available; it does not open binary payloads as PowerScript.

One entry, wherever a file is asked for

Wherever pb-diff asks for a single file you can give one entry of a library instead. The address is container!entry (old.pbl!w_main.srw), and it is written the same way in the New Comparison dialog, on the command line and on the CLI. In New Comparison you need not type it: the Object… button beside a path that names a library chooses one; see Select PB Object.

pb-diff-cli compare "old.pbl!w_main.srw" "new.pbl!w_main.srw" --format json

Libraries are read-only

Libraries are opened read-only, always. No workflow in any of the three executables writes to a .pbl, and there is no setting that changes that: a merged object leaves as an export file and goes back in through PowerBuilder's own Import. See How merging works.

What is not a library

Workspace (.pbw) and target (.pbt) files are not libraries: they name the libraries an application is made of. pb-diff compares them as files, target by target and library by library (see Project and build files); to compare the objects, compare the libraries they list.

In a PowerBuilder 2025 Solution, app.pbl is a folder holding one UTF-8 source file per object rather than a library file, and there is nothing in it to open as a library: add the folder to a File Selection, or open its .sr* files. See PowerBuilder 2025 Solutions.