Re: Another VS 2005 question

This came up at the MVP Summit. The reason Microsoft made it so difficult
in VC2005 is solely to allow them to update the runtime DLL's to fix
security bugs and force our dynamically linked apps to use them. I had
thought from the explanation that if there were a bug fix version of the
runtime DLL's installed in the WinSxS folder (e.g. the SP1 version of the
VC8 libs), then Windows would force our apps to use them regardless of
whether the app manifest said to use the older DLL's located in the app
folder. This potentially would break our apps, since Microsoft may have
changed something in the bug-fix DLL's that is not compatible with our
apps, but Microsoft would rather have this than to have the security holes
still running in their DLL's (loaded by our apps).

But from the thread I cited, it says that if we have DLL's located in the
app folder, they would continue to be used regardless... so if you have
VC2005 DLL's in the app folder, they would continue to be used no matter
if SP1 was installed or not in the WinSxS folder. I still don't know
which is correct. Regardless, it seems avoiding the redist exe and simply
putting the required DLL's into the app folder, and setting the app
manifest to make sure they are used, avoids all this problem with the SP1
vc_redist.

-- David