[Zlib-devel] visual studio linking against msvcrt.dll

[Berke Viktor]

helo,

there are vc9 and vc10 solutions in the zlib source tree. this makes it 
easy to build the zlib libraries. there's one problem, however: they 
link against msvcr90.dll (with vc9). that means, they won't work on xp 
until the vcredist package is installed. xp only has msvcrt.dll.

this can be solved by updating the solutions to use the windows driver 
kit libs and headers. this causes the build to link against the old 
msvcrt.dll found in windows xp.

more info: http://winbuild.daydreamer.nu/

you can find a sample solution in every zlib build on this site. the 
solution and project files have to be copied to 
zlib-1.2.4\projects\visualc6.

an important note: debug is problematic coz there's no debug version of 
msvcrt (msvcrtd.dll). more info about these can be found in the archive 
articles on the winbuild site.

it would be great if these modifications could be applied to zlib (at 
least for RELEASE), and then official x86 and x64 builds could be 
released which could be used across all windows versions from xp to 7.

to update the solution files, one has to:


1) add wdk include dirs

AdditionalIncludeDirectories="c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\inc\api;c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\inc\crt"


2) add wdk lib dirs

AdditionalLibraryDirectories="c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\lib\wxp\i386;c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\lib\Crt\i386"
(for x86)

AdditionalLibraryDirectories="c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\lib\wnet\amd64;c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\lib\Crt\amd64"
(for x64)


3) add msvcrt_winxp.obj or msvcrt_win2003.obj for xp x86 or xp x64 
respectively (xp64 is in fact a rebranded ws2003 x64).

AdditionalDependencies="odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib msvcrt_winxp.obj"
(x86)

AdditionalDependencies="odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib msvcrt_win2003.obj"
(x64)


then zlib still could be built using just free tools, and the need for 
vcredist could be eliminated. VC Express is free, and WDK is free, too.

wdk: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=36a2630f-5d56-43b5-b996-7633f2ec14ff

vc express: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f3fbb04e-92c2-4701-b4ba-92e26e408569

of course then the documentation should be updated to instruct users to 
install WDK along with their version of VS.

and that's just about it. you can check out the results with depends:
http://www.dependencywalker.com/

and you'll see the difference.

feel free to ask questions.