What is Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package for?

Question

I am using Poco library and when running my program on other machines which don't have VS2005 installed, I have to install "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update", otherwise the the program will give error when launching.

What is this redistributable package for? Is there any way to avoid installing this but still let my program running well?

Also, there're so many vcredist_x86.exe out there. How can I know which one is necessary or not when getting error? Thanks.

Answer 1

This package contains the msvc*.dll files that your program depends on.

These files contain functions that (almost) every app compiled with VC++ uses for internal memory management, etc.

If you don't want this dependency, then you need to statically link to the runtime library. (Which according to Microsoft is not recommended.)