"Side By Side Assemblies" Bring DLL Hell 2.0

neutrino38 writes "This is an alert for all developers using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. At the beginning of January, Microsoft issued a security fix for Visual Studio 2005 forcing the use of new dynamic libraries (DLLs) by all applications compiled with this IDE. Basically, applications compiled with Visual Studio 2005 will not work anymore on an ordinary (non-dev) PC unless the newer DLLs are installed. And we found out that this is true on fully updated PCs. I just posted some details and some suggested fixes." Read below for some more background on Microsoft's so-called "side by side assemblies."

For those unfamiliar with the Microsoft world, native microsoft applications written in C++ rely on dynamic libraries. Two of them are infamous: MSVCRT.DLL and MFCxx.dll. Because of software evolution and security fixes, multiple versions of these DLLs were often present in the system, causing application instability. Where Linux implemented a simple suffix notation on the dynamic libraries, Microsoft created a new beast in 2001: the Side By Side assembly. These are basically DLLs with a companion XML file that identifies them. The XML file contains a digital signature and when the system binds these DLLs dynamically to an application, it checks that the signature of the DLL matches the DLL itself. When everythings runs well, this is pretty transparent. But when issues arise, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to troubleshoot and fix. DLL hell is not over.

Re:And by all developers you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Java?

Re:And by all developers you mean

[freak132]

Brainfuck actually. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Speaking as a user

[YourExperiment]

Any now you've wasted another 638 of my bytes storing the extra pixels in your bold text, you insensitive clod!

Re:You should not blame Microsoft for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this [lmgtfy.com]

Re:Time to question if DLLs are still needed

[QuoteMstr]

Why put this code that has been copied and pasted 300 times into a shared function?

I see you've been working with C++ templates recently.

Re:And by all developers you mean

[I cant believe its n]

Blood?

Re:Speaking as a user

[Anonymous Coward]

good product

Fedora

ahahahahahaha... Oh God

Re:.NET internals

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone with knowledge of .NET internals care to comment?

No.

They're all too busy drooling on the cupcakes at their Windows 7 launch parties.

Re:.NET internals

[Skizmo]

That's a contradiction. Sane people wouldn't write software for windows, rendering this a non-issue.

Re:SxS is a fine technology

[Rogerborg]

If everyone ships their own copies of shared libraries, then shared libraries won't be a problem any more? You've cleaved that Gordian knot in twain.

Re:And by all developers you mean

[Rockoon]

For those of you who do not know, the parent poster is talking about these topics:

A) A programming language called Brainfuck.
B) Homophobia.
C) How long the parent has known about Brainfuck.

It seems clear to me that there is a language called Brainfuck that everyone needs to be made aware of.