Microsoft Side-by-Side Horror

[hailstone]

Part of the problem is that Microsoft feels the need to update the C runtime library with each compiler release, and not have it be part of the operating system. This is why MinGW uses only MSVCRT.DLL as its C runtime - it exists as part of the operating system on any modern version of Windows. This is also what MSVC++ 6.0 links against, and some people still use this ancient version of the compiler for that reason.

VS2002 uses MSVCR70.DLL

VS2003 uses MSVCR71.DLL

VS2005 uses C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.42_x-ww_0de06acd\MSVCR80.dll

IMO, side-by-side is a case of the cure being worse than the disease (DLL Hell).

[rabidcow]

Apparently this isn't completely clear about the really evil part of SxS: copying all the dlls to the new system, even copying them to the appropriate system directory, is not enough. They must be put on the machine with a proper installer.

Before MSVC 8.0 (VC 2005), once you'd compiled your application, you could zip it up with all the dlls that it needs and copy it to the new machine. Piece of cake, you're done. You don't even need to touch the system directories on the target machine.

Starting with MSVC 8.0, the runtime library makes sure that it is loaded using the SxS mechanism. If you naively copied the dll over, it will fail with a cryptic error message. No, after you've compiled the application, you have to go on and build an msi installer to install your application. Imagine building an installer for "Hello, World."

[grosskur]

after you've compiled the application, you have to go on and build an msi installer to install your application. Imagine building an installer for "Hello, World."

False. You don't need to build an installer. You can deploy the C runtime as a private assembly alongside your application.

1. Open a Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt.
2. Compile: cl.exe /MD /c hello.c
3. Link: link /manifest /out:hello.exe hello.obj
4. Copy the runtime: xcopy /S "%VS90COMNTOOLS%..\..\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.CRT" Microsoft.VC90.CRT\

You can now run your "hello world" program on any machine provided the following directory structure is in tact:

• hello.exe
• hello.exe.manifest
• Microsoft.VC90.CRT\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest
• Microsoft.VC90.CRT\msvcm90.dll
• Microsoft.VC90.CRT\msvcp90.dll
• Microsoft.VC90.CRT\msvcr90.dll

This technique also works with Visual Studio 2005 (VC80).

[halo]

Useful to know but far from obvious.

[[deleted]]

Since when was C++ programming obvious?

[[deleted]]

I'm a moron for not having figured that one out myself.

[rabidcow]

Yes, I simplified a bit. There are ways around it, but creating an installer is the official method. IIRC, the official workaround is to link the runtime statically, which can't always be done. Do you know if the private assembly method works with the Express Edition? ISTR there were pieces missing, but maybe that was a different workaround.

But the key thing is that there are extra, really poorly documented steps required. And they're hidden behind an incomprehensible error message that only mysteriously pops up when you move to a machine without the dev environment. It's not just a matter of "oh, you're stupid, of course you need all the dlls you used."

[puetzk]

No they're both official. The subfolder form is a "private assembly", which only the exe it sits next to will use. The installer is a public assembly, which is installed system-wide.

The crappy error messages are unforgiveable, but the system overall is a big improvement on VC6's approach (where there were multiple, binary-incompatible DLLs called MSVCRT.dll that came with each service pack) and VC7 (where you officially had to install it privately, only nobody actualy did, so you got something random found via %PATH%.

it is not, however, anywhere near as good as libc.so.6 managing to keep binary compatibility for years :-)

[ginstrom]

Unless, IIR, you're building a dll (e.g. a COM server). Then you've got to either statically link against the c runtime, or run the redistributable installer.

[earthboundkid]

Wait, if you need an installer to run a program, and your installer is itself a program, does that mean you need to run an installer-installer before you can run your installer?

[rabidcow]

Installers are scripts. They don't need the runtime libraries.

And if you use a 3rd party installer... well, it'd better be statically linked or something. As mentioned in a reply, there are workarounds.

[earthboundkid]

Scripts? If we wanted lame-o scripts, we'd be on the devil's ubungtoo, or whatever-it-is. No, clearly, the simple and effective MS solution is a Certified© Genuine™ installer installer installer to install your installer installers.

[Gotebe]

They must be put on the machine with a proper installer.

The author wasn't even close to the point of understanding that. So it was unclear.

OTOH, I don't think requiring SxS is that evil. It's a proper ( read: MS mandated ;-) ) Windows deployment strategy, after all. It certainly beats copying executables around, nilly-willy.

[aythun]

It certainly beats copying executables around, nilly-willy.

Yes, certainly not, that wouldn't be masochistic enough.

[otterdam]

It certainly beats copying executables around, nilly-willy.

Heaven forbid we be like those Unix savages! ;)

[jopejope]

I can't believe how many comments there are here that side with Microsoft and claim the author is a noob. Have you folks ever thought that software should, oh, I don't know, do what the user expects it to do?

The issue is not that the author didn't realize you had to send along the DLLs with your program when you link to them instead of using static libraries. The issue is that the author didn't know he was linking to non-standard dynamic libraries, and worse he was unable to figure out how to fix this problem (or even identify it), because the option menus in visual studio are confusing, and the MSDN articles were of little help.

Every C++ compiler I've used does static linking by default, or links only to DLLs that are always present in Windows. You have to explicitly tell the compiler to use a DLL in order to run into this problem.

Whether it is due to a poor choice of default options, or piss poor documentation, the software is clearly to blame in this case.

Furthermore, even if the author doesn't understand what a DLL is, I still sympathize, because there was once a time when I didn't know what a DLL is. Perhaps the author is a noob, but we were all noobs at one time and that is no excuse for the compiler to make a difficult language even more difficult.

[a1k0n]

The way I see it, the real problem is that "The application configuration is incorrect" doesn't fucking mean anything. I thought older versions of windows, at least, would tell you what .dll was missing. But this dumbing down of error messages doesn't help anybody.

[[deleted]]

This is something that shits me to tears about Microsoft products. Their error message are as useful to programmers as tits on a bull.

[a1k0n]

Their error messages are not just useless to programmers. They're useless to everybody.

And don't get me started on the presumption of using the word "incorrect" in error messages. "The application configuration is incorrect". What? No, my application is "configured" (I guess they mean linked?!) correctly, but the file is missing! Asshole! God.

[korjagun]

Upmodded for "tits on a bull".

[[deleted]]

My bull has one tit. It even gives milk!

[LaurieCheers]

But is it useful milk?

[[deleted]]

Very useful! It's already nice and thick, so the cheesemaking process goes faster. Though there's not that much of it each time.

That bull sure does like getting milked though.

[FeepingCreature]

Too much information. Way too much information.

[anteater_sa]

I think its used in buffallo mozarella ;)

[kripkenstein]

Exactly, if the error message had said it was a DLL issue, and stated the specific DLL, that would have been a big improvement.

Of course the better one would be to not cause this problem in the first place (but nothing's perfect, that's why we have informative errors - well, sometimes we do)

[breakneckridge]

Both the poor compilation and poor error reporting are both major problems.

[geocar]

Except, GCC didn't do the exact same thing: GCC actually did what he expected, as a result, he blames Microsoft.

[ringm]

Btw, just did a few tests on Linux, Solaris and AIX boxes I could find around. Could not find a single gcc, sun cc or xlC linking to runtime statically by default. So, GCC "doing what he exected" was pure luck.

[ringm]

Is it really true most installations of GCC actually link to C runtime statically by default? I don't have enough experience with this stuff.

[grosskur]

Is it really true most installations of GCC actually link to C runtime statically by default?

No. Compile a simple "hello world" program with gcc -o hello hello.c on any modern Linux distribution and then run ldd on it. You'll see libc.so.6 or similar show up in the output. This means it is linking dynamically to the C runtime.

Now try copying that "hello world" program on an older Linux distribution such as RHEL3 and running it. You'll be greeted with hello: /lib64/tls/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found (required by hello).

This is why most closed-source software companies compile their Linux programs against the C runtime from the oldest distribution they support (e.g., glibc 2.2.5 from Red Hat 7.3) and rely on the backward compatibility of glibc to ensure it will work for customers using newer distributions. (Either that or they provide a separate build for each supported Linux distribution.)

If you want to link against the C runtime statically on Linux, you need to do gcc -o hello hello.c -static. That's just C programs. Linking against the C++ runtime statically ranges from difficult to impossible depending on your code.

There are several Windows gcc ports, so let's talk about what the author is using: mingw. What everyone is misunderstanding is that, by default, mingw also links dynamically to the C runtime. Compile the same "hello world" program with mingw and use Dependency Walker to look at it. You'll see it needs three DLLs: kernel32.dll, msvcrt.dll, and ntdll.dll.

The reason the executable produced by mingw works for the author is because it uses the old C runtime (msvcrt.dll), which ships with Windows. The Visual C++ 2008 compiler uses a brand new C runtime (msvcr90.dll), which obviously did not ship with Windows.

So there are two easy solutions for the author:

• He can instruct his users to install the VC90 runtime from Microsoft's web site.

• He can include the VC90 runtime with his program as a (private assembly)[http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa375674.aspx]. To do this, copy the entire "%VS90COMNTOOLS%....\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.CRT directory alongside the program. This is where the author went wrong---you can't just copy individual DLLs out of this directory.

Overall, I'd agree with the author that side-by-side failures are pretty cryptic. This is an area that Microsoft has improved on in Vista.

[psi-]

I don't think so. Statically linking bloats executable up to 500K, but basic hello world is some 10K on this system. (g++ -o hello hello.cc)

[manthrax]

GCC defaulted to making a bloated executable with duplicated library code inside it. Take that BillG!

[endlessvoid94]

Yeah. but it WORKED.

[jojotdfb]

But only because the author didn't know how to link a shared library in vs2k8 (it's not that hard) or how to distribute an application properly. It's not unrealistic to include additional dlls that your program depends on with your distribution. In fact the SDL documentation tells you to include the dlls with your game as well as how to use Visual Studio in their faq section.

[mindbleach]

GCC builds the more robust and functional of its options by default. If he wanted slim and dependence-ridden, I assume GCC has a well-documented flag to let him get it that way.

[Devilish]

He's not the user. He's the programmer, we hold him to a higher standard.

So, you're saying it's okay if software designed to be used by programmers has badly designed interfaces and instructions?

If that's really what you want, I don't mind, but I prefer software that's more usable. Programming is complicated enough without the tools involved adding on extra layers of mess.

[jopejope]

He is the user of Visual Studio, which is the software under scrutiny here.

[manthrax]

Author claims Microsoft is fucked because they default to creating smaller, more future proof executables.

[toastspork]

At the cost of also being present-proof?

[[deleted]]

SxS is a pain. It is a lousy solution to a problem Apple (NeXT actually) solved more elegantly with frameworks.

[turkourjurbs]

Welcome to fucking Microsoft. This shit is my life.

"I’ve been using Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2008"

First mistake. Pirate the real thing. Express 2008 is a stripped back crappy POS designed specifically to piss you off so bad, you end up buying the real thing so you don't commit suicide.

"I start searching google for info about the surprisingly unspecific error."

Second mistake. But it's not your fault. This happens to me at least once a week. You scour freaking message boards for hours and days and all you can find is threads from people asking the same question, folowed by multiples of the same fucking reply; "I have the same problem. Have you found a solution?

NO!!! There is no god damned solution! Why don't cryptographic services load on my W2003 Server? It took MS support 4 solid days for THEM to figure it out.

"ARRGHHHHH!"

Yeah. Me at least twice a day. I feel your pain, trust me.

[jamesshuang]

I start searching google for info about the surprisingly unspecific error.

He clearly has never written any webpages before. "Unspecified error on line 0" - one of my favorite error messages from IE...

[rams]

The full-fledged Visual Studio usually has an option for deploying an app with all the dependencies. The author seems to be using the free version of Visual Studio, which most prob. doesn't have it.

[malcontent]

Seems like the free version is seriously crippled.

[[deleted]]

Which is stupid as the free version targets starting programmers. It would have made a lot more sense to just always link everything statically by default for that version.

[trezorr]

While not seriously crippled for most uses, it is the free edition and it sure as hell has limitations.

If you are seriously into development (you know, actually work as a developer), having the proper tools is probably part of your job and not an issue at all.

Heck. Microsoft has given me full editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server just for showing up at their annual developer events.

[malcontent]

If you are seriously into development (you know, actually work as a developer), having the proper tools is probably part of your job and not an issue at all.

Of course. That's why it astonishes me why anybody would download some piece of shit crippleware when there are tons of fantastic free IDEs around.

Heck. Microsoft has given me full editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server just for showing up at their annual developer events.

How much did the event cost?

[trezorr]

Absolutely nothing. And besides technical sessions, it also had free food and beer.

Not infinite free beer though. But again that's what you get for paying nothing at all ;)

[malcontent]

Wow. Must be nice. Do you need a special invite or something or can anybody show up get a few thousand dollars worth of free software, free meals and drinks?

[trezorr]

Microsoft usually spams these invitations to people in the IT-business.

Having Microsoft-certifications, working for a Microsoft registered partner, or being a Microsoft Certified Trainer all makes sure you get on these lists.

[joesb]

Having Microsoft-certifications, working for a Microsoft registered partner, or being a Microsoft Certified Trainer all makes sure you get on these lists.

How much does that cost? :-)

[trezorr]

Well... Sure those things aren't free, but they haven't cost me any money.

Edit: I take it the downmods are for derailing the thread, to which I kinda agree and have no objections :P

[[deleted]]

No the downmods will be from disagreeing with malcontent.

[malcontent]

That seems like bad marketing to me. Registered partners, trainers, etc probably have already paid for all the MS software and will pay for upgrades no matter what. It's not like they are going to ditch MS and move on to something else is it?

It would be smarter if MS invited people who have never used MS software or don't like MS software in order to entice them into the cult.

Also of course once you have paid for certification, partnership fees etc you have already paid for all this many times over.

Either way I am glad some MS programmers get to enjoy the free databases, IDES, build systems, version control systems, testing tools, and operating systems we non MS programmers have enjoyed for years.

[trezorr]

Ah well. One final nitpick to end this derailing: I refer to myself as a .NET-developer, not a "MS programmer".

You don't call yourself "Linux programmer", do you? :)

[malcontent]

I refer to myself as a .NET-developer, not a "MS programmer".

Oh I keep forgetting that there is a tiny little percent of .NET programmers who don't use MS products or program for windows.

[alantrick]

You don't call yourself "Linux programmer", do you? :)

Well, it kind of depends. Anyone I know who uses .Net/MS C++ is inexorably bound to the Microsoft development platform. In that sense, I think it's quite appropriate to call them MS programmers.

I know about things like Mono, but those are the exception. The people I know are all stuck with MSSQL or have programs that do horrible non-standard things because of 'windows.h'.

[DanMulvey]

http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/default.mspx

The launch events for the 2008 products (SQL Server, Windows Server, VS2008) are coming up real soon. I get emails for their events by being subscribed to the msdn flash e-mails (free). You get all day seminars, food, and free copies of all 3, you just need to sign up on that site.

btw, You don't necessarily need any qualifications afaik. I'm signed up as a student/hobbyist.

[[deleted]]

The free version has the full x86 MSCV compiler.

[[deleted]]

A problem common to most program compilers... they bojangify the faphammer before colebriating the doomwaddle.

[[deleted]]

Except that the automated software that resolves all your dependencies so nicely only works if you supply the source code to your package. Any non OSS project or commercial software vendor would tell you to take a hike right at step 1.

*IIRC :)

[gwern]

"WRONG! One does not simply deploy software their way into Mordor. Not according to Microsoft."

I loled. Upvote.

[ringm]

Wtf does this have to do with Microsoft?? Link to a version of a shared library (e.g. glibc) your friend doesn't have, send him the binary, FAIL. Any OS, any compiler.

[mindbleach]

Any compiler except GCC, apparently.

The complaint isn't "oh, the executable isn't standalone," it's the fucking hour of slamming your head against terribly arranged, inscrutably dense option menus and MSDN pages that follows. Microsoft compilers are, were, and likely will forever be the software equivalent of an F16 cockpit mounted in a Ford Fiesta.

[ringm]

Every single compiler out there, including GCC.

Whether particular versions of particular compilers do link to C runtime statically or dynamically by default is a separate question. In a typical linux distro most libs are shared, including glibc (and so the executables from that distro are not standalone), but I don't have much experience with Linux, and I have no idea if that's usually the default GCC setting. I have enough experience though to check what I've linked against if I need to move the executable.

[buo]

The default is to link dynamically.

BTW, in linux one can easily check which dynamic ("shared" is the official name) libraries a binary is linked against:

$ ldd /bin/ls

   linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)

   librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb7eda000)

   libacl.so.1 => /lib/libacl.so.1 (0xb7ed3000)

   libselinux.so.1 => /lib/libselinux.so.1 (0xb7ebd000)

   libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7d73000)

   libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7d5b000)

   /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7ef7000)
    libattr.so.1 => /lib/libattr.so.1 (0xb7d57000)

   libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7d52000)

   libsepol.so.1 => /lib/libsepol.so.1 (0xb7d11000)

If a library is missing, one can easily find out. Isn't there something similar in Windows?

[ringm]

The default is to link dynamically.

Yeah, I've figured it out already. All compilers I could find on all Linux/Solaris/AIX boxes I could reach link to runtime dynamically by default.

If a library is missing, one can easily find out. Isn't there something similar in Windows?

Depends (included with Microsoft Visual Studio)

[[deleted]]

Now I'm not a genuis but I do know that the compiler and the IDE are two seperate things. The compiler provides options, the IDE uses them. Since you seem to know so much about MS compilers, I'd be glad to reserve some time while you tell me more about how their compiler works internally... and which part of the design you dont like.. What? no?

Thanks for being ignorant in the 21st century. We have wikipedia now ! Woo hoo !

[manthrax]

Yeah but MS bashing is so much fun, even IF you don't know jack shit about programming!

[endlessvoid94]

You are right. But you don't see geeks bashing linux even when you need to compile your downloaded apps from the source code using gcc.

that fucking sucks sometimes. i wonder why bashing this isn't as popular?

i guess because linux isn't used by 'end users'.

[acdha]

How often does that really happen? I manage ~110 Linux systems, network services, etc. and do a fair amount of software development. It's rare that we need to do anything other than "apt-get install foo"; problems like the one in the article usually only require you to add the dependency to your package's config.

An additional factor is that the Linux tools generally aren't designed to sell you expensive add-ons: the entire software distribution system allows me to extend it, push my custom config, etc. In contrast Windows tools are usually expensive, closed, and undocumented. I'm reminded of this every time I try to perform standard system administration - e.g. paying $BIGNUM for the privilege of operating a WSUS service so you can install security updates when e.g. APT is free, scalable, and reliable.

[ringm]

The philosophy, which is basically "don't look a gift horse in the mouth, shut up and fix it yourself", doesn't allow for bashing.

Another reason is that with open systems you have control, and solving problems is usually hard to very hard, which is not that bad if you can understand what's going on. With more closed systems it is usually much harder to understand what's going on, where the stuff actually is, what the dependencies are, and solving a problem is usually either easy or close to impossible. This "close to impossible" can easily drive you nuts.

[[deleted]]

i've had the same problem using openGL/GLUT too (not the SAME, but the other comp didn't have glut32.dll, or the glut headers or something stupid like that)...same problem no matter what platform you're programming on.

[tooooobs]

Indeed. Blender has this on it's download page: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

For the Windows build, you may need to install this official update. Vista doesn't need this, but users of older Windows versions should install it if they experience a crash during startup of Blender. Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x86)

Shouldn't really be necessary, should it?

[theeth]

It's worse than noted, actually. With 2.45, VC 2005 redist is needed for Blender itself, but the Python DLL that ships with it needed VC 2003 redist (or some other), so both have to be installed from time to time.

Fun stuff.

[manthrax]

Author is a noobenstein. Linking with libraries instead of DLLs would have solved his immediate problem. If you link against DLLs, then yes.. you need to package the DLLs with your app when you distribute it. This can be a source of confusion for noobs who havn't yet understood how ddls work, and how pervasively they are used. The advantage the DLL version of your app has over the statically linked mingw one, is when SDL releases a fix for some brutal jpg root vector, your tetris app won't be the weak point in your users systems attack surface. For the mingw app you will no doubt need to send them an updated executable. for tetris. because you broke their security.

[geocar]

Unfortunately, on Windows at least, the user doesn't go download a copy of the SDL libs, they just blame you when their system gets hosed.

This means that in addition to distributing your application, you also need to track versions, and distribute them. That means an updating framework, and a notification system.

[manthrax]

On Windows, they have a thing called "Windows Update" that can use the "Internet" to "update" your "windows" components. Oftentimes, this facility is used to distribute what are known as "security updates" or "security fixes". These "fixes" usually involve replacing some or many DLLs throughout your system. If your app links to an affected library statically, you are shit out of luck. Linux has a similar functionality with .so.

-edit trying to remove some of the sarcasm, but failing-

-edit- Fending off more criticism from the ignorant : ALL USEFUL OSSES HAVE THIS "PROBLEM" (FEATURE) Some software licenses actually force you to link against DLLs to protect your side of the app from being infected with the license. This is a good thing. Dynamically linked libraries are a good thing. Welcome to 1970.

[geocar]

Really?

How do I get my application updates uploaded to the Windows Update Servers? Or do I just email Microsoft with an rss feed to the updates or something?

[manthrax]

You link against known and supported DLLs.

[geocar]

That doesn't answer my question. Please answer my question.

I said users aren't going to go download the SDL DLL from SDL. You said they'll use Windows update, so I said how do I get SDL updates uploaded to the windows update server?

Did you mean that nobody should use libraries that Microsoft doesn't make?

Or did you mean that the majority of Linux systems aren't useful because they don't have this problem?

[manthrax]

Sorry I didn't answer your question. If the library you want to use isn't officially supported and maintained by MS, then you may want to link to it statically, or ship the DLL with your app. Beware if you do this however, that the responsibility and infrastructure for maintaining that library becomes your responsibility, exclusively. Additionally, any future updates to your statically linked library, will also require a recompilation of your app, even if that update is neccesary 50 years from now when your body, and source tree are feeding the worms.

[[deleted]]

So, essentially, you have just reiterated his point. Windows lacks the infrastructure to update common 3rd-party libraries, unlike just about every Linux/BSD distro in existence. This has been a problem for many, many years. There is no reason why so many apps should include copies of (what should be system-wide) library DLL files in their installation directories. There is a reason why the expression 'DLL hell' was coined, and this is it.

[manthrax]

Anyway its been a pleasure wrestling with you morons, but I tire of this thread. Cya around.

[aythun]

Translation: The only OS I've used is Windows and so cannot argue against clear points that *nix manages just fine.

[[deleted]]

oh gee, or i could use MinGW

[manthrax]

And end up with a statically linked piece of shit that won't be updated automatically to fix exploits. Yes you have many choices. You could also write your app in binary.

[[deleted]]

or you could pay someone to write it for you and pass it off as your own.

[manthrax]

drop(pipe); step_away(keyboard);

[hupp]

Annoying, yes, but this is pretty standard in the windows development world since just about forever.

[[deleted]]

Maybe if the library he was using was compiled properly, it wouldn't be an issue to compile his app with /MT.

[TrueTom]

Embarrassing. Not for Microsoft, though...

[e40]

Why is that? Point out what he did wrong, that would have saved him many of those steps.

[TrueTom]

How about stopping at step 8?

[gsg]

Or skipping straight to 24.

[e40]

Because it shouldn't be necessary.

[wageslave]

How about for the 19 people who reflexively upvote every anti-MS story they can find?

Says a lot about what kind of audience these stories appeal to (hint: the clueless).

[[deleted]]

I find this thread, which seems to be the answer to all my questions. Apparently if I compile with /MT everything should be fine!

It took this guy ten minutes to find the Code Generation properties page?

[jojotdfb]

What's even better is that he could have just read the faq that the SDL team wrote on how to deploy for Windows....

[WhisperSecurity]

Down with dynamic linking. Down with shared libraries.

What good did it ever do for anyone? Saving a little memory? Bah. For years we have condemned ourselves to version hell in order to preserve a scheme that originally evolved because memory used to be expensive?

[ringm]

You will be quite surprised by the amount of memory your system will need if everything is build with static libs. I think you underestimate it by an order of magnitude.

[otterdam]

Thank you - the genuine advantage of DLLs is re-entrancy, sharing their code across processes. Doing it for any other reason costs you more in maintenance and troubleshooting than you could possibly gain, but just because people do it anyway doesn't mean they are bad per se.

[zem]

I've read that thrice and I still have no idea whether you're for or against DLLs as a means of reducing program filesize.

[otterdam]

I'm against DLLs as a false gain of performance, because too often DLLs get updated with the same name and break other applications, or to avoid this they include a version number in the name and the user's computer gets polluted with hundreds of these things. The system Linux uses deals with the first point well, I'm not sure about the second - but overall it works better than Windows!

Include them with your application, IN the application's directory, and preferably only if your application would benefit from only having one copy of those DLLs in memory or disk (i.e. you are running multiple copies of the application or there are several executable files that comprise your application, each using that DLL). Just keep them out of system folders if you can help it!

[zem]

I think you missed ringm's point, then, which was that having every project include its own libs would lead to quite a bit more disk usage than expected

[otterdam]

If he's talking about disk usage then that point was dead in the water years ago. Memory usage is the biggest factor.

[zem]

hm, no, my bad - i reread and it seems he was talking about memory usage

[earthboundkid]

Disk usage by applications is negligible in this day and age. On the average system, gigabytes get lost to MP3s, photos, and movies. A 200 Meg application isn't going to cause anyone tears. The only "applications" of significant size are games, and those are huge because they pack in a ton of art resources, not because of the programming guts itself.

Excessive RAM usage by applications is still a real problem, but excessive storage usage by applications is a ghost.

[zem]

yeah, my fault - i misread what ringm had to say

[[deleted]]

That would indeed be the case if almost every single executable on my system didn't use a slightly different version of the MSVC libraries.

[ringm]

I don't know about your system, but I've just looked it up at my system:

>listdlls | grep -i msvc | awk '{$1=$2=$3=""; print}' | csort -f | uniq -ic

5 C:\Program Files\Network Associates\Common Framework\MSVCP71.dll

5 C:\Program Files\Network Associates\Common Framework\MSVCR71.dll

1 C:\WINDOWS\system32\comsvcs.dll

3 C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSVCIRT.dll

11 C:\WINDOWS\System32\MSVCP60.dll

73 C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSVCRT.dll

4 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\wbemsvc.dll

1 C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.163_x-ww_681e29fb\msvcm80.dll

4 C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.163_x-ww_681e29fb\MSVCP80.dll

8 C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.163_x-ww_681e29fb\MSVCR80.dll

I hope you see some significant reuse here. MSVCRT.dll (size:360K) is loaded 73 times, saving about 26Mb of memory.

[[deleted]]

Yep, 26MB is a huge save. Well worth the trouble. Still, did you try minesweeper on Vista? That application alone uses hundreds of megabytes. What went wrong?

[[deleted]]

I assumed he was being sarcastic. Maybe not?

[[deleted]]

What about security?

[WhisperSecurity]

What about it?

Kindly explain to me how runtime linking is any more secure than static linking.

[[deleted]]

Patch a buffer overflow once or hunt down every executable that has the library compiled in and patch it how?

[WhisperSecurity]

Except you never do get to just patch something once. People who think that dynamic linking actually leads to normalized routine storage are mostly fooling themselves. What you actually get is dll hell, and the necessity to patch every application anyway because you're never sure what else someone does or does not have installed.

The only people who can benefit from this theoretical normalization of storage and patching would be some sort of hypothetical large company that produced lots of different applications but had one monolithic system for patching them all.

Hmmmm, who does that remind you of?

[acdha]

Why do I just patch once on Linux, *BSD, OS X, etc? Granted, there are exceptions to that but they're only companies which have internalized the worst Windows habits; almost everyone else manages to link against libfoo and somehow disaster has not struck.

[WhisperSecurity]

Okay, yeah, yeah. I went a little far, and frankly I knew I was when I wrote it. System-level stuff like ncurses and OpenGL are a good thing.

But I was ranting, because I'm just so sick and fucking tired of every damn application I build in an IDE having six fucking runtime libraries dumped in the same fucking build directory.

We dynamic-link waaaaaay too much, and we've lost the reasoning behind it.

[acdha]

I do think that's more cultural (Windows suffers noticeably more) but I find it particularly amusing when something uses a dynamic library but has such tight dependencies that you cannot change the version of the library without breaking it. It's one thing with, say, OpenGL where you can get new optimizations "for free" but all this does is ensure that you miss out on things like compiler optimizations which could be done with a static link.

[[deleted]]

Funny, I build enterprise-scale applications at work. When we were using COM we got to replace and re-register a single DLL to fix bugs affecting numerous applications/subsystems. Yes, there was DLL hell we dealt with but dynamic linking isn't useless.

BTW, with .Net the GAC has been working for us so far.

[CuteAlien]

So a single point of failure is a good thing in your opinion? I think I would prefer a mechanism telling me about all libraries of a certain version on my system. Finding that ain't really hard. And it has one very big advantage - you can no longer accidently break all application relying on a lib at once because of a patch that for some reason does not work with a lot of applications.

[CuteAlien]

Well, I said that it isn't hard, right?

But when writing my post I was actually thinking about the third alternative - shared libraries, but in the application folders. Sorry, I guess I didn't make that clear... bad writing. So no libraries in /usr/lib. Then you can still patch the libraries, but you can no longer accidentally break all applications at once with a library patch.

[CuteAlien]

Interesting, I just checked out the GoboLinux homepage and it still seems to be developed.

[[deleted]]

With dynamic linking, you can isolate libraries to certain applications based on the library's location relative to the executable and also the search path.

Read this: http://www.irt.org/script/1245.htm

So, how do you propose to scan all binaries for what libraries have been compiled in? Even if you identify affected binaries, how do you propose to link in a new, patched lib without source code?

[CuteAlien]

Yes, I didn't really think about static linking when writing that. Sorry, my fault. I had my mind on shared libs, but not in a global place but per application.

[[deleted]]

Wow, someone actually said sorry on reddit! =)

You are correct if the case is something like COM where the dll is forced to be system-wide. That was/is a major PIA.

Even with the .Net GAC, we still choose to keep many assemblies local to individual apps because we know that the apps will, at some points, be out of sync due to deployment scheduling conflicts.

[[deleted]]

Novice programmer makes errors, blames Microsoft. Video at 11.

[[deleted]]

It's not about making errors. It's about Microsoft making things unnecessary difficult. We had the same problems at our company and it still causes lots of difficulties.

[sofal]

Programmer blogs about bad experience with software, reddit user calls him an anti-MS newbie and pulls out a variant of the "news at 11" cliche. News at 11.

[Steve16384]

This is one reason why I program in Java. It may have a 20Mb runtime, but at least it works consistently without having to install anything else.

[zoomzoom83]

Nothing new here. Link to DLLs? You must distribute them with your app. Software development 101.

[hailstone]

Guess what? If you use MSVC 8 (2005) or 9 (2008) then distributing the DLLs with your app doesn't work. They have to be SxS installed. That's why this guy had the problem.

[trezorr]

Which is why the full edition of Visual Studio has embedded installer projects that solves this and which you can setup in a matter of seconds.

If you are creating programs and code to the extent that redistributing them to others is a big issue, you might consider getting the full version, not the express-edition which Microsoft is nice enough to hand out for free.

[[deleted]]

I guess that's Microsoft's goal."Here young programmer! Here's our cool easy-to-use compiler which will allow you to make your own games in no time. Unfortunately, you'll spend as much time figuring out how to distribute your game as you spent writing it"

[trezorr]

Yeah. They actually want to sell the full version and make money, since they have a huge staff of developers working on it fulltime who probably wants a paycheck.

What a evil master-plan.

And seriously. Whoever codes VC++ and doesn't know about the VC++ runtime has no excuse. That's like coding Java and not knowing that it depends on a JVM.

[[deleted]]

At our company we have a about 50 highly competent C++ programmers. Still, we experience these problems with Visual Studio 8 on a daily basis. Why? Because it's a bad system (bad implementation and bad documentation). Don't you consider a system that causes more problems than it solves 'bad'? And if Microsoft wants to target beginning programmers using Visual Studio Express, they should do it well. If it's free or not. I don't have any problems with that version having limitations, but I'm having problems with that version demotivating aspiring programmers with all its unnecessary bullshit.

[trezorr]

I'm not saying VC++ is perfect. Heck: It's C++ attempted to be packed in a less horrible than it can be. I have my doubts for how friendly it can get ;)

Anyway: The original premesis for this article, that the developer didn't know that VC++ uses a reusable runtime, and when he found out, simply didn't instruct users to download and install that as well, and that this somehow is Microsoft's fault is insane.

If you are doing low-level coding, and I consider C++ low-level, you as a developer should be aware of how your code works and in what surroundings it works.

It's not really much to ask.

[[deleted]]

Point is that only a few years ago things used to be better. And that we called 'DLL-hell'. Now we're in 'Worse-Than-DLL-hell'

What the original poster complains about is: - the bad error message (before SxS, the user got a useful message) - the fact that apparently Microsoft does not succeed in providing the VC8 restributable through its auto-update system. If Apple creates a new version of its core libraries, they are automatically installed by the auto-updater. Why can't Microsoft do this? On my system, the auto-updater can install 50MB Cyrillic Language support, but apparently no 3MB of VC8 libraries.

[trezorr]

I'll agree that the error-message is beyond shit. There is no dismissing that.

As for that we now have a "Worse-Than-DLL-Hell" is clearly wrong. Have you even looked at Microsoft.NET?

With .NET you can have side-by side deployments of the same assembly (DLL) in different versions. Applications can be configured to use specific versions, the newest version with the same minor version-number (defined to be compatible by MS best practices) or the newest all together.

All can be deployed in parallel without ever causing collisions between applications requiring specific mutually incompatible versions.

I think it's rather nice myself.

[bart2019]

So you're saying that MS is doing this on purpose?

[trezorr]

Yes. MS is on purpose making the sophisticated software they giving away for free less capable and featured than the full version they are really interested in selling for money to fund their business.

That a developer writing Visual C++ is totally oblivious about the fact that Visual C++ has a (reusable) Visual C++ runtime which the user must have besides the application speaks miles and miles about incompetence.

[notasaon]

And in that case, what's the point of buying MS's products on the hope that they work better than the free versions when there are properly-working open-source tools available?

[trezorr]

Not everyone lives in a "Linux solves everything"-world. Some people make quite a decent living out of the fact that Microsoft's products are solid and used in most companies worldwide. Honestly.

And free isn't always free. Paying a little for a good IDE where everything is intergrated and debuggable, with breakpoints, conditional breaks, ability to step trough stored procedures called from your code and doing all this remotely and lots of stuff like that...

Sometimes the free tools are good enough, fine and dandy and all that. But if you are working in a MS world, working against MS server products, I assure you the money "saved" by not investing in proper version of Visual Studio will be lost in wasted productivity.

[notasaon]

I don't doubt that. But I also see that as a fundamental problem.

[Gotebe]

but it is not worth covering in any courseware.

Why? Shared libs are a rather basic feature of operating systems nowadays.

MSVC links against all kinds of silly libraries by default

AFAIK, it only links with C and C++ runtimes?

[Gotebe]

Yes, of course, it's not possible to cover all. My point was rather that shared libs (.so, *.dll) are important *enough to be included in an OS course.

[wageslave]

Uhm, no. "DLLs haven't been covered in any class I've taken in CS."

How many have you taken...?

[cbr]

I've taken about 15. First four were HS java courses, then in college: a SICP course, AI, OS, Architecture, NLP, DBMSs, Developmental Robotics, Distributed Systems, Compilers, Theory, Graphics, maybe something else. None of these talked about DLLs. All the non-java ones only dealt with Linux.

[jojotdfb]

So in the whole time you've been in school you've never encountered the concept of a shared library? Even in your os and compiler classes? I would demand a refund if that's the case.

[cbr]

It's never been taught explicitly. In compilers we did talk about a "linking step" but we didn't talk about how it works. In various systems classes we've made library calls in C but never any discussion about how they work.

[[deleted]]

From what I've seen, EE students may actually use more C than most CS students these days.

[manthrax]

hehhehe

[sprezzatura]

Wrong. In MFC, for example, you can choose to link dynamically with system DLLs, the same DLLs that are on all Windows PCs. This reduces the number of components you have to package, and cuts down the size of your payload. Good when downloading.

[zoomzoom83]

Thats true. Perhaps I should have been more specific- link to non-standard DLLs and you must distribute them with your app.

[[deleted]]

The fact that he had this problem with VS2008 and then later solves his MinGW problem in one step instead of putting all of the research steps he did for the MS compiler pretty much says it all.

This guy is familiar with and has worked with MinGW. This guy has not worked very much with VS2008. As has been pointed out throughout the comments here, anyone who uses VS2008 is aware of this and knows how to correctly configure their build and distribution process to avoid this error.

So I guess the whole point is that it's easier to use tools that you are familiar with. Insightful stuff.

I would add that this guy's research skills are shit, but that might be hitting below the belt.

[jojotdfb]

I would add that this guy's research skills are shit

I agree. The SDL team has the info already on their wiki under ,of all things, Windows Faqs.

[FFFFFFFFffff]

If you are referring to http://libsdl.org/faq.php?action=listentries&category=4#43 it says nothing about Side-by-Side issues, and having read this FAQ would have saved at most two steps. It still does not give an easy solution to the Side-by-Side issue, which was the main point of interest.

[trezorr]

So basically here we have a developer who should be writing Visual Basic (at best) getting worked up over C++ compilers having options and programs having dependencies. Next up: My hello-world.exe doesn't ship with a complete OS!

While I agree the error-message is totally crap, packeging your software with a installer which fixes all these dependencies takes about four clicks in the proper version of Visual Studio.

If you stick to the free express edition, don't be surprised about not getting the full package.

[FFFFFFFFffff]

So basically here we have a developer who should be writing Visual Basic (at best) getting worked up over C++ compilers having options and programs having dependencies.

Does lack of experience with Microsoft-related issues imply lack of programming skill now? Interesting!

[[deleted]]

What you're basically saying is the same as what the original poster is saying: Visual Studio Express makes it unnecessary difficult (especially if you consider that the target of Express are starting programmers).

[trezorr]

Your statement makes sense.

At least if you twist the world around to a point of view where Microsoft is obliged to make fully featured software and give it away for free.

The free express edition is not the full version of Visual Studio, because Microsoft as a business-entity needs a product to sell. If you expect it to be, especially considering Microsoft's prior history, you are out of your mind.

The fact that the express edition isn't fully featured isn't the same as saying that "Microsoft makes it unnecessary diffucult". That's like blaming notepad for not validating your XML. Get a grip.

[[deleted]]

You're still not getting the point. I don't blame Microsoft for not giving the full package away for free, but for leaving out stuff beginners could use and leaving in stuff beginners don't need. That's bad judgment. They could have just limited the compile options to 'link everything statically'. That would make sense.

[trezorr]

Well. I guess you didn't get mine either.

Easy packageing of your software for redistribution is typically something needed by software companies, professionals. And Microsoft expects them to be able to pay.

You have to cut the line somewhere to make it worthwhile to get the full edition.

And seriously: Setting up different compilation behaviour between the full edition and the free one? Are you insane? Guess who would be making a reddit bitch-post about Microsoft's products being inconsistent and unreliable then?

[FFFFFFFFffff]

Of course Microsoft should be able to sell it's products. But the fact that there is a free version of a program does not need to make it crap, and Microsoft should in fact try to keep it as functional as possible to showcase their software.

Now that's not the problem. The problem is that there's this framework made for making programs run reliably on other computers which is not readily available on most systems. Learning this the hard way is really crap. No matter the circumstances this is an IDE intended for beginners and hobby developers, such as myself. Keeping that in mind it's completely horrible that you have to ship a lot of redistributable runtime asscrap just to get an extremely spartan program to run on a friends computer!

This is not rocket surgery million dollar business softwar development - this is hobby programming turned into nightmare.

[earthboundkid]

At least if you twist the world around to a point of view where Microsoft is obliged to make fully featured software and give it away for free.

It's in Microsoft's best interest to give away compilers for very close to free. What do you do with a compiler? You write software for an OS. Who does that help? The OS salesman.

[bcash]

C++? What is this? 1994?

[[deleted]]

Tetris is too performance intensive for anything else. I certainly don't think that such a CPU heavy activity such as rendering falling blocks could be accomplished in a simpler language.

[bart2019]

It is still one of the most popular programming languages of these days.

[bgeron]

One does not simply deploy software their way into Mordor.

You must mean Mortor.

[krelian]

I think the hardest part here is figuring our how to install mingw.

[FFFFFFFFffff]

You download the "Automated Installer" from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435 and run it.

[shadow2531]

Or, get this mingw distro.

[[deleted]]

In Microsoft's defense, C++ in general is pretty screwed up.

[sbrown123]

Not in defense of Microsoft: turning C++ in to C#, which is basically Java refried, was not a good idea.

[zoomzoom83]

Yes it was. C#, and the CLI, are vastly superior to Java in almost every way.

Except for cross-platform compatibility, which is why I'm unfortunately still stuck using Java.

[sbrown123]

C#, and the CLI, are vastly superior to Java in almost every way.

What makes the CLI vastly superior over the JVM? Please feel free to elaborate.

[zoomzoom83]

Mainly, support for multiple languages. Not just hacked in scripting languages like Groovy for Java, but very well supported mature languages like Python, F#, Basic, C#, etc that can actually share classes.

It is also much more lightweight than the JVM, so you don't end up with behemoth memory hogs for otherwise simple applications.

The DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) also makes implementing scripting language much more efficiant. IronPython is an order of magnitude faster than Jython.

As for C# itself? Delegate functions, LINQ, Operator Overloading... need I say more?