To link or not to link - this is the answer
Category NoneI've been having the craziest time trying to figure out static linking for a couple DLLs I maintain. See, these two projects go way back - to where I used Visual C++ 6.0 five years ago when they were first created. Then a couple years ago I moved them into Visual C++ .NET 2002 and all worked well. For one project, it continued to produce the self-contained 149k DLL I needed for my QuickPlace API add-in. Then, I moved the project to Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition - for three very good reasons:
1. It's free
2. I want to be using updated IDEs and tools, both for me and my customers
3. It's free
First thanks to Paul Ryan who checked out my settings via a Sametime (7.5!) meeting, and chatted with me for over an hour about it. And thanks to Markus Seitz, who correctly pointed out that while VC++ 2005 Express has the property settings to do static linking, it doesn't actually do it upon compiling. This limitation isn't what you would call "well documented".
So after a good deal of research, I found that I have two options:
1. Purchase Visual Studio 2005 Standard or Professional editions (about $270 and $520 street prices) to receive the "full version", link statically, and deliver a single (149k) DLL to my customer.
2. Compile my (15k) DLL and deliver it to the target Domino server along with the C Runtime DLLs it needs.
Good news!!! Last month, Microsoft posted the Visual C++ Redistributable package, a simple exe that installs all of the DLLs you would need for side-by-side (Winsxs) deployment. It can be found here. It requires Windows Installer 3.0 or 3.1, which in fact might not be on your server, but that can be easily remedied.
Again thanks to Paul and Markus for helping with this. Initially I will be using the second method, then will move back to static linking when I upgrade.
I'll also be checking out the recently-installed C++ IDE plug-in for Eclipse. It shipped with Callisto simutaneous release, along with BIRT and several other projects.
