CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiovisual-c++
Wes Miller
Wes Miller

Reputation: 2241

How to Package a VC++ Win32 Console App and DLL

I have developed a Win32 Console app DLL and a small tester application for it. As far as I know neither uses MFC, .COM, .NET or dot-anything else. Development platform is VS2009 on WinXP/SP3

When I give the DLL and EXE to someone else, they are unusable. Attempting to use them generates errors similar to "Application cannot be used, the application configuration is wrong." and "cannot find xxx.dll" (not exact wording on these error messages).

I have learned from reading that there are dependencies that must ship with the EXE and DLL. These dependencvies seem to be specific to VS 2009 abd should include the MSVCRT09, etc.

When I followed MS's instruction to make a setup.exe/MSI installer for a Setup and Deployment Project (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235317%28v=VS.90%29.aspx) I add the dll to the project, move it to the "MyLibrary" folder and no dependencies are found or listed in the Solution Explorer. Yet, I know there are dependencies, DEPENDS.EXE says so.

Can anyone walk me through this or name a better site with instructions. Once again, MS's help isn't all that helpful.

thanks,

Wes

Upvotes: 0

Views: 699

Answers (1)

Windows programmer
Windows programmer

Reputation: 8065

Visual Studio 2008 is version 9.0. A program built with Visual C++ 2008 normally does have dependencies on the C run time library MSVCRT09, as you discovered. If the C run time library is not installed on the destination PC (either already installed or as part of your setup project) then your application fails, as you discovered. It is no surprise that DEPENDS.EXE displays the dependency. The only question seems to be why Visual Studio 2008 doesn't display the dependency in its Solution Explorer window.

Before building your Visual Studio setup project (MSI and setup file), Visual Studio might not have had any reason yet to search for dependencies. But after the setup project is built, in my experience the Solution Explorer does show the dependencies it found, next to other dependencies that you set explicitly. If those don't show up after building, something is weird.

Upvotes: 1

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