I've been looking around and I'm not sure I see a clear answer to this so I'm sorry if this has been asked before; my "Google-Fu" is failing me.
We are developing software against .NET Framework but historically we have had to include a number of 3rd party components. Also, historically, these tended to come with various dependencies on Microsoft Visual Studio C++ runtime versions. This has led to us distributing as part of our initial installation process:
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2005 Redistributable (SP1) - build 8.0.61001
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2008 Redistributable - build 9.0.30729.6161
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2010 Redistributable - build 10.0.40129
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2012 Redistributable - build 11.0.61030
But as the years have gone on many of the 3rd party components we used have been replaced with newer and better ones, and we include them to our Projects through NuGet. And I'm finding that as I install our software on systems without installing the above first most of our applications are working perfectly normally without errors. So I'm starting to think a lot of the above are no longer necessary.
Ideally I would just like to chuck 'em all. Relieve the pressure on our support staff to install all these components as well as our software when setting up machines for first use.
It would be great if I could just tell them "look, just install VC++ redistributable version xyz and anything that needs one of the above four builds will work just fine"
I see many resources online claiming that, for example, the 2017 redistributable replaces the 2015 one, and so on but does that backward compatibility go all the way back to the 2005 SP1 version?
My second question is a bit more generic and I don't really expect many answers to that one but.
are there any well known 3rd party developer tools that you know are using one of the four Redistributables mentioned in my list above? For example, we use Crystal Reports runtime 13.0.17 - oh how I wish we could dump that and move on .... And one of our support staff has already identified that that sometimes won't install if the 2005 SP1 runtime is missing. Trying to find out such info from online resources is like looking for a needle in a haystack....
the 2017 redistributable replaces the 2015 one, and so on
Yes, for certain values of "and so on" ;-) The 2015, 2017 and 2019 redistributables are binary compatible with the most recent release thereof. Quoting Microsoft from C++ binary compatibility between Visual Studio 2015, 2017, and 2019:
The runtime libraries and apps compiled by any of these versions of the compiler [2015, 2017, 2019] are binary-compatible. It's reflected in the C++ toolset major number, which is 14 for all three versions. [...] Say you have third-party libraries built by Visual Studio 2015. You can still use them in an application built by Visual Studio 2017 or 2019. There's no need to recompile with a matching toolset. The latest version of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package (the Redistributable) works for all of them.
does that backward compatibility go all the way back to the 2005 SP1 version?
No. Quoting again from the same page:
The Microsoft C++ (MSVC) compiler toolsets in Visual Studio 2013 and earlier don't guarantee binary compatibility across versions. You can't link object files, static libraries, dynamic libraries, and executables built by different versions. The ABIs, object formats, and runtime libraries are incompatible.
To make things even worse, VS 2005 and 2008 did not have one single set of redistributables, but instead several different versions that were installed in SxS (side by side) mode. From Side-by-side assembly:
In side-by-side, Windows stores multiple versions of a DLL in the WinSxS subdirectory of the Windows directory, and loads them on demand. This reduces dependency problems for applications that include a side-by-side manifest. [...] Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 and 2008 employ SxS with all C runtime libraries.
are there any well known 3rd party developer tools that you know are using one of the four Redistributables mentioned in my list above?
This is way too wide for any useful answer. You'll have to (a) identify which tools/components/etc you are using, and (b) which are the dependencies of each, including (though not limited to) the C/C++ runtimes.
Related
ALL,
I would like to build a dokan library. According to dokan instruction I need the WDK which can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
Problem is - I have MSVC 2010 and it looks like WDK is for MSVC 2013 and I don't know what to do.
Could someone explain to me where can I get WDK for MSVC 2010?
Thank you.
The Windows 8.x SDK generally works with Visual Studio 2010--with the exception of a few places in the include\winrt headers where they used C++11 constructs not supported prior to VS 2012, specifically strongly-typed enumerations. The issue is there is no automatic integration for the VS 2010 toolset.
The recommended solution is to use .props files. See the Visual C++ Team Blog for details, and I have the fully authored .props files for both x86 and x64 hosted on my blog. These are also used in my open-source projects (DirectX Tool Kit, DirectXTex, DirectXMesh, UVAtlas, DXUT, Effects 11) which support VS 2010 + the Windows 8.1 SDK.
I believe the situation is basically the same with the Windows Driver Kit 8.x as it actually integrates into the existing Windows 8.x SDK. You will just need to add include\km and lib\km folders to the .props for the kernel mode projects.
That said, with VS 2013 Community edition being freely available full-featured version of Visual Studio under generous license terms, I'm not sure why you are sticking with VS 2010...
I would like to use both Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop on the same computer. What's a good way to accomplish this?
I imagine that installing Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition on a computer that already has Visual Studio Express 2013 installed would cause unexpected errors and break the current installation, or the installation would fail automatically because there already is a newer version installed.
The reason why I want both is because there is a lot of learning material written for both the 2005 and the 2013 editions. There are more programming books written for the 2005 edition actually.
I essentially want to know how I can isolate the two and still use them both in parallel without any problems caused by conflicting files, registry keys, environment settings, etc.
I'm using Visual Studio Professional 2012 (with Update 2) and since I have a project that needs to be built with the VC++ 2010 toolset I also installed Visual C++ 2010 Express (with SP1).
I use the newer 2012 IDE also for the older projects. So for these projects I set the Platform Toolset to v100. And when I also set the runtime library to /MT or /MTd I get the following error:
error LNK1127: library is corrupt
for libcpmt.lib or libcpmtd.lib, depending on the configuration.
What could be wrong here?
Installation history:
VS2012 Professional
Windows 7 SDK
Uninstalled VS2012 and Windows SDK
VC++ 2010 Express
VS2012 Professional
If I understood correctly, you installed VS2010 after installing VS2012? If not, please edit your question to make it clear.
This sequence of installations is not recommended by Microsoft, and there are plenty of caveats and ReadMe's to navigate in order to find out what's happened.
I suggest that the best thing to do is to reinstall VS2012 (or do a repair install), then see what - if anything - is still broken.
I want to compile next line:
R"(The String Data \ Stuff " )"
When target is windows XP (vc110_xp), it gives me compilation error; if the VC++ target is not Windows XP, compiler accepts the syntax.
¿Why?
The November 2012 Compiler CTP is a community technology preview: it's a preview for people to use and test with, but is not intended for production use (it does not come with a "Go Live" license).
Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 is an update for Visual Studio 2012 that is intended for production use. This is the update that includes support for using Visual C++ 2012 to target Windows XP.
These are two different releases, made for two different purposes. The November 2012 Compiler CTP was released before Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 was released, and it does not include the support for Windows XP (it only updates the compiler binaries, though, so you might be able to use some MSBuild magic to use the new preview compiler with the new Windows XP support libraries; doing so is not supported, though).
I'm creating distrib using Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset. And I want to add the Visual C++ Redistributable to the package. Here
http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/install_vcredist.htm
are words about merge modules necessary to make this. But there are no Microsoft_VC100_CRT_x86.msm in my
c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Merge Modules\
:(((
I'm using MS VC++ 2010 Express. I have tried to Repair the installation. No relusts.
Any ideas?
Will be grateful for any help :)
Express versions do not include the merge modules.
From the product description:
Note: Visual C++ Express provides a subset of the functionality that is available in other Visual C++ editions. Therefore, some components, libraries, or features available in these editions are not available in this version of the product, even though they might be discussed in the documentation. For these features, you would have to upgrade to another version of Visual C++. For more information about these editions, see Visual C++ Editions.