Re: Beware platform SDK with VS2005
"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@flounder.com> wrote in message
news:cpdha3hu57f1lseedom0llsig4eq9qn8ed@4ax.com...
The Platform SDK contains its own version of the rc compiler, which has a
version of
rcdll.dll. In reading the crash dump, Scot Brennecke discovered that the
version of
rcdll.dll that was in the crash was incompatible with VS8.
Frankly, I found the entire situation apalling. Apparently the Platform
SDK is some
independent project that only occasionally touches on anything that VS is
doing (for the
people who want just command-line compilers and no VS). And there is
apparently no
guarantee that anything delivered with the Platform SDK is compatible with
VS (and in the
Web page, it says they are compatible, so I saw no reason to not install
the new version).
Apparently VS uses executables from the Platform SDK, but only guarantees
it will work
with the version delivered with VS. And if the new Platform SDK is
"integrated" with VS,
it places itself AFTER the VS version, so you will get obsolete header
files instead of
new header files. Overall, it is a deployment disaster of the first
order.
"You don't win the hearts and minds of customers by writing code people
*tolerate*; you
win hearts and minds by writing code people *love*". Apparently the
independent groups
at Microsoft have no interlocking responsibility to produce usable
products, a situation I
find truly bizarre.
What I do is move the new SDK's Includes and Libraries to the top of the
list in the VC++ Directories properties so they are used before the ones
provided by Visual Studio. But I leave the Executables alone, so the ones
with Visual Studio are used and not the SDK's new ones.
As I understand, the SDK shipped with each release of Visual Studio is the
one that was currrent when the snapshot was taken for the VS release. The
SDK is produced by separate team, and (at least in theory) Visual Studio is
but one of the consumers of it. The SDK is meant to be used by all manner
of 3rd party tools as well.
I do agree the SDK situation has become quite confusing because there is no
longer a "latest SDK" we can use in all cases. If we're targeting Vista, we
use the Vista SDK, but that does not guarantee the result will be usable in
XP (I don't think). Since I think all of us still need to support XP, that
leaves me wondering what SDK is really the right one for XP... the other SDK
has something like Windows Server 2003 in the name, and I'm not sure about
that either. I guess I could find out but the SDK shipping with VS2005
seems good enough.
-- David