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Overview of potential upgrade issues (Visual C++)

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Over the years, the Microsoft C++ compiler has undergone many changes, along with changes in the C++ language itself, the C++ Standard Library, the C runtime (CRT), and other libraries such as MFC and ATL. As a result, when you upgrade an application from an earlier version of Visual Studio you might see compiler and linker errors and warnings in code that previously compiled cleanly. The older the original code base, the greater the potential for such errors. This overview summarizes the most common classes of issues you're likely to see, and provides links to more detailed information.

Note

In the past, we've recommended that upgrades that span several versions of Visual Studio should be performed incrementally one version at a time. We no longer recommend this approach. We've found that it's almost always simpler to upgrade to the most current version of Visual Studio no matter how old the code base.

Questions or comments about the upgrade process can be sent to vcupgrade@microsoft.com.

Library and toolset dependencies

Note

This section applies to applications and libraries built with Visual Studio 2013 and earlier. The toolsets used in Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio 2019 are binary compatible. For more information, see C++ Binary Compatibility between Visual Studio versions.

When you upgrade an app from Visual Studio 2013 or before to a newer version, it's often both advisable and necessary to upgrade all libraries and DLLs the app links to. Either you must have access to the source code, or the library vendor must provide new binary files compiled with the same major version of the compiler. If one of these conditions is true, then you can skip this section, which deals with the details of binary compatibility. If neither is the case, then the libraries might not work in your upgraded app. The information in this section will help you understand whether you can continue with the upgrade.

Toolset

The .obj and .lib file formats are well defined and rarely change. Sometimes additions are made to these file formats, but these additions generally don't affect the ability of newer toolsets to consume object files and libraries produced by older toolsets. The major exception is if you compile using /GL (Whole Program Optimization). If you compile using /GL, you can only link the resulting object file by using the same toolset that was used to produce it. So, if you produce an object file with /GL and use a Visual Studio 2017 (v141) compiler, you must link it using the Visual Studio 2017 (v141) linker. It's because the internal data structures within the object files aren't stable across major versions of the toolset. Newer toolsets don't understand the older data formats.

C++ doesn't have a stable application binary interface (ABI). But Visual Studio maintains a stable C++ ABI for all minor versions of a release. Visual Studio 2015 (v140), Visual Studio 2017 (v141), Visual Studio 2019 (v142), and Visual Studio 2022 (v143) toolsets vary only in their minor version. They all have the same major version number, which is 14. For more information, see C++ Binary Compatibility between Visual Studio versions.

If you have an object file that has external symbols with C++ linkage, that object file may not link correctly with object files produced by a different major version of the toolset. There are many possible outcomes: the link might fail entirely (for example, if name decoration changed). The link could succeed, but the app could fail at runtime (for example, if type layouts changed). Or your app might continue to work and nothing will go wrong. Also note, while the C++ ABI isn't stable, the C ABI and the subset of the C++ ABI required for COM are stable.

If you link to an import library, any later version of the Visual Studio redistributable libraries that preserve ABI compatibility may be used at runtime. For example, if you compile and link your app by using the Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 toolset, you can use any later redistributable. That's because the 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022 libraries have preserved backward binary compatibility. The reverse isn't true: You can't use a redistributable for an earlier version of the toolset than you used to build any component of your code.

Libraries

If you #include a particular version of the header files, you must link the resulting object file to the same version of the libraries. So, for example, if your source file includes the Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 <immintrin.h>, you must link with the Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 vcruntime library. Similarly, if your source file includes the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5 <iostream>, you must link with the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5 Standard C++ library, msvcprt. Mixing-and-matching isn't supported.

For the C++ Standard Library, mixing-and-matching has been explicitly disallowed by use of #pragma detect_mismatch in the standard headers since Visual Studio 2010. If you try to link incompatible object files, or if you link with the wrong standard library, the link fails.

Older CRT version mixing-and-matching was never supported, but it often just worked because the API surface didn't change much over time. The Universal CRT broke backwards compatibility so that in the future we can maintain backwards compatibility. We have no plans to introduce new, versioned Universal CRT binaries in the future. Instead, the existing Universal CRT is now updated in-place.

To provide partial link compatibility with object files (and libraries) compiled with older versions of the Microsoft C Runtime headers, we provide a library, legacy_stdio_definitions.lib, with Visual Studio 2015 and later. This library provides compatibility symbols for most of the functions and data exports that were removed from the Universal CRT. The set of compatibility symbols provided by legacy_stdio_definitions.lib is sufficient to satisfy most dependencies, including all of the dependencies in libraries included in the Windows SDK. However, some symbols were removed from the Universal CRT that don't have compatibility symbols. These symbols include both some functions (for example, __iob_func) and some data exports (for example, __imp___iob, __imp___pctype, __imp___mb_cur_max).

If you have a static library built by using an older version of the C Runtime headers, we recommend the following actions, in this order:

  1. Rebuild the static library using the new version of Visual Studio and the Universal CRT headers to support linking with the Universal CRT. This approach is fully supported, and the best option.

  2. If you can't (or don't want to) rebuild the static library, you may try linking with legacy_stdio_definitions.lib. If it satisfies the link-time dependencies of your static library, you'll want to thoroughly test the static library as it's used in the binary. Make sure it isn't adversely affected by any of the behavioral changes that were made to the Universal CRT.

  3. Perhaps your static library's dependencies aren't satisfied by legacy_stdio_definitions.lib or the library doesn't work with the Universal CRT because of behavior changes. In this case, we recommend you encapsulate your static library into a DLL that you link with the required version of the Microsoft C Runtime. For example, if the static library was built using Visual Studio 2013, build this DLL using the Visual Studio 2013 toolset and C++ libraries as well. By building the library into a DLL, you encapsulate the implementation detail that is its dependency on a particular version of the Microsoft C Runtime. Be careful the DLL interface doesn't leak details of which C Runtime it uses, for example, if it returns a FILE* across the DLL boundary, or a malloc-allocated pointer the caller must free.

Use of multiple CRTs in a single process isn't in and of itself problematic. (In fact, most processes load multiple CRT DLLs. For example, Windows operating system components depend on msvcrt.dll, and the CLR depends on its own private CRT.) Problems arise when you jumble state from different CRTs. For example, you shouldn't allocate memory using msvcr110.dll!malloc and attempt to deallocate that memory using msvcr120.dll!free, and you shouldn't attempt to open a FILE using msvcr110!fopen and attempt to read from that FILE using msvcr120!fread. As long as you don't jumble state from different CRTs, you can safely have multiple CRTs loaded in a single process.

For more information, see Upgrade your code to the Universal CRT.

Errors caused by project settings

To begin the upgrade process, open an older project/solution/workspace in the latest version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio will create a new project based on the old project settings. Check if the older project has library paths or include paths that are hard-coded to non-standard locations. It's possible the files in those paths won't be visible to the compiler when the project uses the default settings. For more information, see Linker OutputFile setting.

In general, now is a great time to organize your project code to simplify project maintenance and help get your upgraded code to build as quickly as possible. If your source code is already well organized, and your older project compiles under Visual Studio 2010 or later, you can manually edit the new project file to support compilation on both the old and new compiler. The following example shows how to compile for both Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017:

<PlatformToolset Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)'=='14.0'">v140</PlatformToolset>
<PlatformToolset Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)'=='15.0'">v141</PlatformToolset>

LNK2019: Unresolved external

For unresolved symbols, you might need to fix up your project settings.

  • If the source file is in a non-default location, did you add the path to the project's include directories?

  • If the external is defined in a .lib file, have you specified the lib path in the project properties, and is the correct version of the .lib file located there?

  • Are you attempting to link to a .lib file that was compiled with a different version of Visual Studio? If so, see the previous section on library and toolset dependencies.

  • Do the types of the arguments at the call site actually match an existing overload of the function? Verify the underlying types are what you expect, both for any typedefs in the function's signature and in the code that calls the function.

To troubleshoot unresolved symbol errors, you can use dumpbin.exe to examine the symbols defined in a binary. Try the following command line to view symbols defined in a library:

dumpbin.exe /LINKERMEMBER somelibrary.lib

/Zc:wchar_t (wchar_t Is Native Type)

(In Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 and earlier, wchar_t wasn't implemented as a built-in type. It was declared in wchar.h as a typedef for unsigned short.) The C++ standard requires that wchar_t is a built-in type. Using the typedef version can cause portability problems. If you upgrade from earlier versions of Visual Studio and see compiler error C2664 because the code is trying to implicitly convert a wchar_t to unsigned short, we recommend that you change the code to fix the error, instead of setting /Zc:wchar_t-. For more information, see /Zc:wchar_t (wchar_t Is Native Type).

Upgrading with the linker options /NODEFAULTLIB, /ENTRY, and /NOENTRY

The /NODEFAULTLIB linker option (or the Ignore All Default Libraries linker property) tells the linker not to automatically link in the default libraries such as the CRT. It means that each library has to be listed as input individually. This list of libraries is given in the Additional Dependencies property in the Linker section of the Project Properties dialog.

Projects that use this option present a problem when upgrading, because the contents of some of the default libraries were refactored. Because each library has to be listed in the Additional Dependencies property or on the linker command line, you need to update the list of libraries to use all the current names.

The following table shows the libraries whose contents changed starting with Visual Studio 2015. To upgrade, you need to add the new library names in the second column to the libraries in the first column. Some of these libraries are import libraries, but that shouldn't matter.

If you were using: You need to use these libraries:
libcmt.lib libcmt.lib, libucrt.lib, libvcruntime.lib
libcmtd.lib libcmtd.lib, libucrtd.lib, libvcruntimed.lib
msvcrt.lib msvcrt.lib, ucrt.lib, vcruntime.lib
msvcrtd.lib msvcrtd.lib, ucrtd.lib, vcruntimed.lib

The same issue applies also if you use the /ENTRY option or the /NOENTRY option, which also have the effect of bypassing the default libraries.

Errors caused by improved language conformance

The Microsoft C++ compiler has continuously improved its conformance to the C++ standard over the years. Code that compiled in earlier versions might fail to compile in later versions of Visual Studio. That's because the compiler correctly flags an error that it previously ignored or explicitly allowed.

For example, the /Zc:forScope switch was introduced early in the history of MSVC. It permits non-conforming behavior for loop variables. That switch is now deprecated and might be removed in future versions. We strongly recommend you don't use that switch when upgrading your code. For more information, see /Zc:forScope- is deprecated.

One example of a common compiler error you might see when upgrading is when a non-const argument is passed to a const parameter. Older versions of the compiler didn't always flag it as an error. For more information, see The compiler's more strict conversions.

For more information on specific conformance improvements, see Visual C++ change history 2003 - 2015 and C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio.

Errors involving <stdint.h> integral types

The <stdint.h> header defines typedefs and macros that, unlike built-in integral types, are guaranteed to have a specified length on all platforms. Some examples are uint32_t and int64_t. The <stdint.h> header was added in Visual Studio 2010. Code that was written before 2010 might have provided private definitions for those types. And, those definitions might not always be consistent with the <stdint.h> definitions.

If the error is C2371, and a stdint type is involved, it probably means that the type is defined in a header either in your code or a third-party library file. When upgrading, you should eliminate any custom definitions of <stdint.h> types, but first compare the custom definitions to the current standard definitions to ensure you don't introduce new problems.

You can press F12 (Go to Definition) to see where the type in question is defined.

The /showIncludes compiler option can be useful here. In the Property Pages dialog box for your project, select the Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Advanced page and set Show Includes to Yes. Then rebuild your project. You'll see the list of #include files in the output window. Each header is indented under the header that includes it.

Errors involving CRT functions

Many changes have been made to the C runtime over the years. Many secure versions of functions have been added, and some have been removed. Also, as described earlier in this article, Microsoft's implementation of the CRT was refactored in Visual Studio 2015 into new binaries and associated .lib files.

If an error involves a CRT function, search Visual C++ change history 2003 - 2015 or C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio to see if those articles contain any additional information. If the error is LNK2019, make sure the function hasn't been removed. Otherwise, if you're sure the function still exists, and the calling code is correct, check to see whether your project uses /NODEFAULTLIB. If so, you need to update the list of libraries to use the new universal (UCRT) libraries. For more information, see the section above on Library and dependencies.

If the error involves printf or scanf, make sure that you don't privately define either function without including stdio.h. If so, either remove the private definitions or link to legacy_stdio_definitions.lib. You can set this library in the Property Pages dialog under Configuration Properties > Linker > Input, in the Additional Dependencies property. If you link with Windows SDK 8.1 or earlier, add legacy_stdio_definitions.lib.

If the error involves format string arguments, it's probably because the compiler is stricter about enforcing the standard. For more information, see the change history. Pay close attention to any errors here, because they can potentially represent a security risk.

Errors caused by changes in the C++ standard

The C++ standard itself has evolved in ways that aren't always backward compatible. C++11 introduced move semantics, new keywords, and other language and standard library features. These changes can potentially cause compiler errors and even different runtime behavior.

For example, an old C++ program might include the iostream.h header. This header was deprecated early in the history of C++ and was eventually removed completely from Visual Studio. In this case, you need to use <iostream> and rewrite your code. For more information, see Updating old iostream code.

C4838: narrowing conversion warning

The C++ standard now specifies that conversions from unsigned to signed integral values are narrowing conversions. The compiler didn't raise this warning before Visual Studio 2015. Inspect each occurrence to make sure the narrowing doesn't affect the correctness of your code.

Warnings to use secure CRT functions

Over the years, secure versions of C runtime functions have been introduced. Although the old, non-secure versions are still available, it's recommended to change your code to use the secure versions. The compiler will issue a warning for usage of the non-secure versions. You can choose to disable or ignore these warnings. To disable the warning for all projects in your solution, open View > Property Manager, select all projects for which you want to disable the warning, then right-click on the selected items and choose Properties. In the Property Pages dialog under Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Advanced, select Disable Specific Warnings. Choose the drop-down arrow and then choose Edit. Enter 4996 into the text box. (Don't include the 'C' prefix.) For more information, see Porting to use the Secure CRT.

Errors caused by changes in Windows APIs or obsolete SDKs

Over the years, Windows APIs and data types have been added, and sometimes changed or removed. Also, other SDKs that didn't belong to the core operating system have come and gone. Older programs may contain calls to APIs that no longer exist. They might also contain calls to APIs in other Microsoft SDKs that are no longer supported. You could see errors about missing Windows APIs or APIs from older Microsoft SDKs. It's possible the APIs were removed or superseded by newer, more secure functions.

Windows API documentation lists the minimum or maximum supported operating systems. For information about a specific Windows API, look it up in the API Index for desktop Windows applications.

Windows version

When upgrading a program that uses the Windows API either directly or indirectly, you need to decide the minimum Windows version to support. In most cases, Windows 7 is a good choice. For more information, see Header file problems. The WINVER macro defines the oldest version of Windows that your program is designed to run on. If your MFC program sets WINVER to 0x0501 (Windows XP) you'll get a warning because MFC no longer supports XP, even if the compiler toolset itself has an XP mode. Compiler toolset support for Windows XP ended in Visual Studio 2017.

For more information, see Updating the target windows version and More outdated header files.

ATL / MFC

ATL and MFC are relatively stable APIs but changes are made occasionally. For more information, see Visual C++ change history 2003 - 2015, What's new for Visual C++ in Visual Studio, and C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio.

LNK 2005 _DllMain@12 already defined in MSVCRTD.lib

This error can occur in MFC applications. It indicates an ordering issue between the CRT library and the MFC library. MFC must be linked first so that it provides new and delete operators. To fix the error, use the /NODEFAULTLIB switch to Ignore these default libraries: MSVCRTD.lib and mfcs140d.lib. Then add these same libraries as additional dependencies.

32 vs 64 bit

If your original code is compiled for 32-bit systems, you have the option of creating a 64-bit version instead of (or in addition to) a new 32-bit app. In general, you should get your program compiling in 32-bit mode first, and then attempt 64-bit. Compiling for 64-bit is straightforward, but in some cases it can reveal bugs that were hidden by 32-bit builds.

Also, you should be aware of possible compile-time and runtime issues relating to pointer size, time and size values, and size-specific format specifiers in printf and scanf functions. For more information, see Configure Visual C++ for 64-bit, x64 targets and Common Visual C++ 64-bit migration issues. For more migration tips, see Programming guide for 64-bit Windows.

Unicode vs MBCS/ASCII

Before Unicode was standardized, many programs used the Multibyte Character Set (MBCS) to represent characters that weren't included in the ASCII character set. In older MFC projects, MBCS was the default setting. When you upgrade such a program, you'll see warnings that advise to use Unicode instead. If you decide the conversion to Unicode isn't worth the development cost, you may choose to disable or ignore the warning. To disable it for all projects in your solution, open View > Property Manager, select all projects for which you want to disable the warning, then right-click on the selected items and choose Properties. In the Property Pages dialog, select Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Advanced. In the Disable Specific Warnings property, open the drop-down arrow, and then choose Edit. Enter 4996 into the text box. (Don't include the 'C' prefix.) Choose OK to save the property, then choose OK to save your changes.

For more information, see Porting from MBCS to Unicode. For general information about MBCS vs. Unicode, see Text and Strings in Visual C++ and Internationalization .

See also

Upgrading projects from earlier versions of Visual C++
C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio