Problem deploying binary

[Ted]

I have MS Visual Studio 2005, on 32 bit WXP.

I created a simple C++ application. It runs well and fast on my
machine. However, when I copy the binary to another machine, I get
the following error:

The system cannot execute the specified program.

This is silly. It is a trivial, commandline program intended for
batch processing a few dozen files, using:

FinanceCPP "C:\\Work\\rdata31.dat" "C:\\Work\\output31.txt"

On my machine, that generates thousands of lines of output on standard
out and creates a plain text file with an equal number of lines (a
file a few hundred kBytes in size).

When I created it, I selected File->New_project, and then, under
Visual C++|General, I selected an empty project. Did I need to do
anything else, in order to be able to just copy the resulting binary
to any other machine (running, say, 32 bit WXP, or 64 bit Windows
Server 2003)? I'd didn't worry about even looking for DLLs since I
assumed any I'd need (such as the standard C library, and standard C++
library) would be part of Windows, or statically linked (since I did
nothing special, using only a couple math functions and iostreams).

I know the name of this group includes "dotnet", but in this specific
case, I am just trying to use VC++ to compile a plain old ANSI
standard C++ program (there's NOTHING in this that isn't part of the
ANSI C++ standard). This isn't a language issue, but rather a what
did I miss in the use of the MSVS IDE issue.

I assume I have missed something simple, but I have yet to find what
that is.

Thanks,

Ted

 

[David Lowndes]

When I created it, I selected File->New_project, and then, under

Visual C++|General, I selected an empty project. Did I need to do
anything else, in order to be able to just copy the resulting binary
to any other machine

Change your project options to static link to the 'C' run-time
library. The default is to use the DLL version of the library which
means that you ought to install the VC++ run-time DLL as well as your
EXE. By static linking the run-time you'll only need your EXE.

The depends utility (www.dependencywalker.com) is an indispensable
tool for working out what dependencies your programs have.

Dave

 

[adebaene]

 I'd didn't worry about even looking for DLLs since I
assumed any I'd need (such as the standard C library, and standard C++
library) would be part of Windows, or statically linked (since I did
nothing special, using only a couple math functions and iostreams).

This is a wrong assumption : The C/C++ standard libraries come with
the compiler, they are not part of Windows. The default option for
Visual 2005 is to link against the DLL version of the CRT, which means
that you must distribute the DLL with your application.
If you want to link statically with the CRT (so that your app is self-
containing), change the option in the project settings (Configuration
Properties -> C/C++ -> Code Generation -> Runtime Library : Choose
"Multithreaded" for Release configuration and "Multithreaded Debug"
for Debug configuration)

As David said, Dependency Walker is very usefull to diagnose quickly
this kind of distribution problems.

Arnaud

 

[Ben Voigt [C++ MVP]]

Ted wrote:

Your question has already been answered, so I'll address this bit:

I know the name of this group includes "dotnet", but in this specific
case, I am just trying to use VC++ to compile a plain old ANSI
standard C++ program (there's NOTHING in this that isn't part of the
ANSI C++ standard). This isn't a language issue, but rather a what
did I miss in the use of the MSVS IDE issue.

The correct group would have been
microsoft.public.vc.language