Compile C++ in VS without requiring MSVCP120D.dll

Question

I'm trying to make a binary that can be run on any windows machine without the visual c++ stuff installed (I'm assuming that's what MSVCP120D.dll is however my searching was not very fruitful as to what this actually is). I made a game for an assignment and wanted to have other people (non-devs without VS stuff installed), help me test it but they kept getting errors saying that the above dll is missing. I'm not using any Visual C++ stuff and have the /Za flag set to ensure that it's just ANSI C++. Does Visual Studio support compiling ANSI C++ and if so how do I go about making it not use Visual C++ stuff, if it doesn't support this what compiler should I use?

Answer 1

As you can see here, the MSVCP DLL is the platform's implementation of the C++ Standard Library. In short what that means is you cannot distribute your application without needing the "stuff" that these libraries provide. All compilers regardless of platform would need some kind of implementation of the Standard Library. Typically this is distributed in the form of libraries.

However you can distribute your application so that the "stuff" is built in to your program directly, rather than being shipped in a separate DLL. In order to do this, you must statically link your application to the Standard Library.

There are a few ways to accomplish this. One way is in Project Settings. In "Project" > "Configuration Properties" > "C/C++ Code Generation" > "Runtime Library", choose "Multithreaded (/MT)" as opposed to "Mutithreaded (Static)".

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By the way, the "D" in "MSVCP120D.dll" you mentioned above means "Debug." This means that you are trying to distribute a debug build of your program. You should (almost) never do this. Distribute release builds instead.

Answer 2

You have three options (in the order I'd recommend):

1. Don't statically link, instead get people that want to run your game install the visual studio re-distributable package. 32-bit VC 2010 version here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555

2. Statically link the CRT (the dll you don't want to require at runtime) see here for details: How do I make a fully statically linked .exe with Visual Studio Express 2005?

3. Build an app that doesn't even use the CRT at all. Here you will have to implement your own operator new that calls HeapAlloc(), and operator delete that calls HeapFree(), its an interesting challenge ;). To do this you tell the linker to ignore all default libs.

Answer 3

Build with the static runtime libraries rather than the DLL versions.

Go to Properties, C/C++, Code Generation, Runtime Library and select /MTd or /MT rather than the /MDd and /MD options.

Answer 4

You'll want static linking, that 'builds in' the external library calls into your binary. It does have the added affect of larger binary file, but in your case that doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

On a side note, MSVCP120D.dll is the Microsoft Visual C++ 12 debug DLL (dynamic link library) that contains all of debug C++ libaries (i.e. iostream, string, etc). That library is what you would be 'baking in' to your final binary.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Configure your project to link against the runtime statically rather than dynamically.

Answer 6

I encountered this error when I tried to execute my exe on a different machine that had a newer version of Visual Studio on it. You need to change the project properties and re compile in order for this to go away.

To do this:

1. Open up solution that you are trying to run
2. Right click on the Project file - > Properties
3. In Configuration Properties and General, Ensure Platform Toolset is configured to be the correct compiler on your machine. If it is not correct, it should give a message next to it saying that it's not installed.
4. Build and run the code again and you should no longer get the issue.