zlib + masm

Question

Can zlib be used with masm without all the c runtime libraries such as msvcrt.dll and many others? If so, can you tell me how?

Answer 1

Zlib is not a C++ library so I don't understand why you would need C++ runtime libraries to use it.

I think you mean C libraries.

Answer 2

zlib does include optimised assembler for various processors and assemblers including masm. But that assembler is only for the innermost parts of zlib. It's not, in other words, a complete reimplementation of zlib in assembler. Using the masm chunks therefore won't change the dependencies that zlib has.

That said: it should be possible to statically link your application, including any of the C runtime library features that you're using and not having external dependencies.

Then again, msvcrt.dll is present on pretty much every Windows system anywhere, so why would you want to do this?

Answer 3

it depends on what you want to do, if you just want to decompress data, i would recommend TINF library from Joergen Ibsen, those assembly implementations from ZLIB package are pretty useless and will give you a headache ;)