Visual Studio and Windows SDKs - need some experienced comments about SDK usage and RTLs
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Context: I have some applications that were originally written for Xp. This is important, because we're running into issues with security changes from Xp -> Windows 10. Some of the code in the application makes assumptions for Xp that are evil for Windows 10. So, I'm migrating these apps from VS 2008 to VS 2017 and maybe later. So, firing up VS2017 and attempting to build some demo projects, I'm prompted to re-target the application. Visual Studio offers me 3 different SDKs. I've dealt with mfc over the years, but the mfc dlls seem to be always included everywhere. Should I be concerned about which sdk I build for?
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Context: I have some applications that were originally written for Xp. This is important, because we're running into issues with security changes from Xp -> Windows 10. Some of the code in the application makes assumptions for Xp that are evil for Windows 10. So, I'm migrating these apps from VS 2008 to VS 2017 and maybe later. So, firing up VS2017 and attempting to build some demo projects, I'm prompted to re-target the application. Visual Studio offers me 3 different SDKs. I've dealt with mfc over the years, but the mfc dlls seem to be always included everywhere. Should I be concerned about which sdk I build for?
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
I have done this when moving from VS2015 to 2017, and recently when moving to 2019. I always choose the one with the highest number. Alternatively, create a quick minimal Windows app in VS 2017 and check its properties to see which version it sets as default.
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Context: I have some applications that were originally written for Xp. This is important, because we're running into issues with security changes from Xp -> Windows 10. Some of the code in the application makes assumptions for Xp that are evil for Windows 10. So, I'm migrating these apps from VS 2008 to VS 2017 and maybe later. So, firing up VS2017 and attempting to build some demo projects, I'm prompted to re-target the application. Visual Studio offers me 3 different SDKs. I've dealt with mfc over the years, but the mfc dlls seem to be always included everywhere. Should I be concerned about which sdk I build for?
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
You might want to consider moving directly to VS2019. Differences are quite small but one important factor that made me upgrade is that, in VS2019, you can set the target platform to "10.0 (latest installed version)". That saves you a lot of headaches when changing development machines or when you have different developers. Again from my experience, you can safely assume that a Windows 10 machine will have the runtime already installed.
Mircea
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You might want to consider moving directly to VS2019. Differences are quite small but one important factor that made me upgrade is that, in VS2019, you can set the target platform to "10.0 (latest installed version)". That saves you a lot of headaches when changing development machines or when you have different developers. Again from my experience, you can safely assume that a Windows 10 machine will have the runtime already installed.
Mircea
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you can safely assume that a Windows 10 machine will have the runtime already installed.
lol, did you really just say that? In fact, this is where I was going with my concern. A couple of these apps have very small user bases, but one of them happens to be my boss. For some reason, he seems cursed when trying to run these applications, but I do understand what you are saying.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Quote:
you can safely assume that a Windows 10 machine will have the runtime already installed.
lol, did you really just say that? In fact, this is where I was going with my concern. A couple of these apps have very small user bases, but one of them happens to be my boss. For some reason, he seems cursed when trying to run these applications, but I do understand what you are saying.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Don't know about your apps but for mine, I run Dependencies ( GitHub - lucasg/Dependencies: A rewrite of the old legacy software "depends.exe" in C# for Windows devs to troubleshoot dll load dependencies issues.[^], make a list of required DLLs. As I said, for the C++ runtime, I didn't have troubles recently. This was such a relief coming from the horrible days of VC2010 with those dreadful SxS assemblies.
Mircea
