<solved> QB64 without its IDE GUI ?

[SMcNeill]

Steve, I tried it with a clean source distribution, but it still builds the IDE, I even deleted the lines that had the '$include and also deleted the ide folder but no luck
maybe the setup re-downloads files making my efforts to no effect

How are you building your EXE?  With the setup_win.cmd file?  If so, that explains the issue, as it builds off the already translated version inside source/temp.   

What you want to do is make the changes in the source/ide/ide_methods.bas, and then use the existing version of qb64pe.exe to compile you a new qb64pe version with source/qb64pe.bas.