How can we ensure that we deliver all DLLs required in all Windows variants?

Question

Dear Sir or Madam,

We have been developing an enterprise solution for the kitchen trade for 20 years.

We keep having the problem, that with different Windows versions, especially with older, unpatched operating systems, DLLs are missing. We cannot install the VC-Redist-Package on the computers of our customers, because mostly administrative rights are not available. Therefore we deliver the DLLs in the executable directory.

How can we ensure that we deliver all DLLs required in all Windows variants?

Features of our solution:

• multibyte
• shared MFC
• 32-bit
• Visual Studio Professional 2019
• 850,000 lines of program code

Best regards

Klaus R. H. Walther

Answer 1

If you dynamically link your application to the MFC library, you must redistribute the matching MFC DLL. Because all MFC DLLs use the shared version of the C runtime library (CRT), You may also need to redistribute the CRT.

For more details I suggest you could refer to the Docs: Redistributing Visual C++ Files and Redistributing the MFC Library