VC8 manifests

From: Andrey Melnikov (melnikov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-29 07:25:37

David Abrahams wrote:
> the manifest generation step that became required in
> vc8. 
> 
It isn't required. It's optional. If you don't install CRT dlls in 
WinSxs folder, you don't need manifests.

In VC8 Microsoft CRT libraries started to use Windows Side-by-Side 
technology. If you use MSI merge modules to distribute the DLLs, on 
Windows XP and later the DLLs are now installed in a subfolder of 
WINDOWS\WinSxS folder instead of WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. Because this new 
location isn't in PATH, you need to use Side-by-Side manifests (either 
external or linked into the EXE/DLL as resources) to tell Windows where 
to look for msvcr80.dll and friends.

Andrey