exe + libs in one dir: theme engine not found

["fkater googlemail com" <fkater googlemail com>]

Hi all

I have an executable and all libraries needed by gtk+ in a
single directory. This works well.

So, no bin/, etc/, lib/, share/ structure, no system or user
settings, and even no rc files, all is compiled in using
gtk_rc_parse_string().

However, I fail to make gtk+ load the theme module library
from that directory, too.

I tried the rc option: module_path = ".", however, gtk then
first warns: "module_path directive is now ignored", and
then "Unable to locate theme engine in module_path:
ubuntulooks".

FYI: (1) When I build a proper subdirectory structure (bin,
etc, lib, share) with the theme module in the right place,
it works. (2) I have also tried gtk_rc_find_module_in_path()
which is not recommended by the docs for some reason, and in
fact it did not help.  (3) I have read about GTK_PATH,
however, I do not want to go that way, since I do neither
plan to create an installer to set this environment variable
nor do I like using scripts or helper executables to set the
env var before the real app starts.

Any hints?

Thank You
 Felix