Re: [patch #6448] [MSVC 7/7] Add MSVC Support

[Charles Wilson]

Charles Wilson wrote:

> 2003 stuff didn't need any of that .manifest crap, and couldn't

Speaking of which, because of the manifest, you can't even mix
patchlevels of the msvc80 runtimes. With SxS, a user can have 27
different revisions of msvcrt80.dll installed, but any single app better
only rely on the same one, even transitively through other DLLs it uses.
This is a complete FUBAR -- take the "official" zlib1.dll.  Which
runtime is it allowed to use?  So, which patchlevel of the msvc80
compiler am I required to use, if I want to link against the official
zlib1.dll.

Oh, wait -- I can't use msvc80. Because the official zlib1.dll depends
on msvcrt.dll.

So, the "official" zlib1.dll is of no practical use, except for
(unmodified) mingw. For msvcXX, I must build my own zlib DLL (and
hopefully I'll follow the dll naming "rules" put forward by the zlib
people when I do that).  Ugh.

OTOH, this means that you can't feasibly distribute binary DLLs anymore,
unless you're using COM+ or some similar runtime isolation between your
DLL and your customer's/client's code.  Which means...open source!

--
Chuck