Re: Visual Studio 2013/2015/2017 compatibility and libraries

[Peter Wu <peter () lekensteyn nl>]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 04:41:27PM +0100, Graham Bloice wrote:
> On 24 April 2017 at 15:28, Pascal Quantin <pascal.quantin () gmail com> wrote:
>
> > 2017-04-24 16:25 GMT+02:00 Graham Bloice <graham.bloice () trihedral com>:
> >
> > > On 24 April 2017 at 14:56, Pascal Quantin <pascal.quantin () gmail com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi Peter
> > > >
> > > > 2017-04-24 15:43 GMT+02:00 Peter Wu <peter () lekensteyn nl>:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > >
> > > > > Are there possible issues to be aware of when using the libraries (built
> > > > > with mingw/msvc2013) with the Wireshark binaries built with VS2017?
> > > > > When trying it with a friend, it seems to build and run with no issues.
> > > > >
> > > > > I thought that there can be problems with combining different MSVC
> > > > > runtime versions in one binary? Looking through the libraries, it seems
> > > > > that there is a combination of at least MingW (GeoIP?) and MSVC (Lua).
> > > > > (And apparently VS2015 (14.0) and VS2017 (14.1) are binary compatible.)
> > > >
> > > > Just a side note: most of our 3rd party libraries are compiled with
> > > > MinGW(32|64) except zlib (that we compile from scratch if I remember
> > > > properly, cannot check right now), Lua for 2.0.X and 2.2.X and Qt.
> > > > Historically we were using a MinGW Lua build but that was triggering a
> > > > specific MinGW bug and we switched to MSVC based Lua library to work around
> > > > this. But it required us to package Lua for every supported MSVC variants
> > > > (as you need to have the corresponding C runtime installed on your PC while
> > > > Wireshark installer packages the C runtime of the version you used to
> > > > compile), which was painful. That's also why it is highly suggested to
> > > > install the Qt package matching the MSVC version you intend to use for
> > > > compilation.
> > > > Since the MinGW bug was fixed, so master branch is again using the MinGW
> > > > based Lua library. The only pre-compiled 3rd party package built with MSVC
> > > > I can think to right now is Qt. As of today they offer MSVC2013 and
> > > > MSVC2015 flavors (there is also a MinGW build but for 32 bits only). It
> > > > looks like Qt 5.9 will provide a MSVC2017 version according to
> > > > http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2016-Decem
> > > > ber/028159.html
> > > >
> > > > I think Graham proposed to discuss which MSVC to use (for 2.5 I guess)
> > > > during Sharkfest US.
> > > The major issue with using DLL's that are compiled with a different C
> > > runtime (CRT) from the main application is the issue of different heaps for
> > > each CRT and mallocing from one and freeing from a piece of code using
> > > another leads to bad things happening.  If the malloc\free is all done from
> > > within code that uses the same CRT then you should be OK.
> >
> > This is exactly the issue we faced with our GeoIP library (bug 13578) and
> > why I added a GeoIP_free symbol.
> >
> >
> > > The reason why the CRT changed with each version of Visual Studio was
> > > that this was the only way for MS to service the CRT with bug fixes as it
> > > couldn't be upgraded with Windows Updates as that might break various
> > > applications (that used the ill-advised static linking to the CRT).
> > >
> > > The Universal CRT was introduced with Windows 10\VS 2015 to allow Windows
> > > Updates to service a portion of the runtime [1].  The part of the CRT that
> > > deals with heaps is now serviced by the OS, so theoretically apps built
> > > with VS2015 or later (with the Windows 10 SDK) can now use DLL's compiled
> > > with VS2015 or later.
> >
> > > [1]: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/03/03/intr
> > > oducing-the-universal-crt/
> >
> > Nice. But do you know if practice is working as good as theory ?
>
> I don't.  This [1] earlier MS blog entry goes into a little more detail
> about the split and says that the VS part contains process start-up and
> exception handling stuff.
>
> I do note however that vcpkg doesn't appear to build VS specific versions
> of libraries and is available for VS 2015 update 3 or later.

I doubt that they will make it available for pre-2015 versions, but
according to a vcpkg developer, there might be version suffixes in the
future:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5ud9sr/if_youre_doing_windows_dev_and_not_using_vcpkg/

    | | vcpkg install rapidjson:x64-windows
    | And what compiler/version is this for?

    We use a system of triplets that each define an entire, consistent
    toolchain and build target. We only support targets of VS2015/2017
    today (they're binary-interchangeable).

    So, in the case of :x64-windows, this is built using the v140/v141
    ABI against Windows Desktop amd64. In the future, we look forward to
    adding :x64-win-vXYZ and beyond to ensure you never mix ABIs!
-- 
Kind regards,
Peter Wu
https://lekensteyn.nl
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