Windows: Brackets may fail to launch on a very clean OS image

[peterflynn]

1. Get a clean Windows image with no preinstalled software (e.g. no MS Office)
2. Install Brackets; don't install anything else yet
3. Try to launch Brackets

Result: Error message about MSVCP100.dll being missing. Brackets doesn't launch.
(I haven't repro'ed this myself, but that's the report we've gotten and it makes sense to me)

Expected: Brackets still launches fine

Workaround: manually install the DLL from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555, or just install a couple of other Windows apps and it will generally wind up on your computer

A huge number of native Windows apps require this DLL, which is basically the MS Visual C runtime library (often called the "redistributable"). There are many versions of it and different apps require different versions, but this version is common enough that any computer with other apps installed on it is virtually guaranteed to already have the DLL. That said, the Brackets installer should actually include this file so that we're not just assuming it's present.

I'm not sure if we should go to the trouble of installing it in a standard location to be shared with other apps. That would have a tiny benefit in disk space savings, but would probably be trickier to get working. I think we can just place the file next to our .exe instead and be all good...

[peterflynn]

Tentatively marking low priority, since no real-world users have reported hitting this so far

[pthiess]

Reviewed - added installer tag.

[jlondon]

Some Reflow users are running into this. I posted the workaround to see if it fixes the issue.

Tritia Pocci @TritiaPOCCI
@reflow install failing something about a MSVCP100.dll? Did re-download | install. Thanks!

[le717]

@peterflynn Placing the DLL beside the exe should work. I've done this myself with older PC video games that required a now-removed DLL.

If that is the only missing DLL (I semi-doubt it is. It only reports one missing DLL at a time), you could try shipping the DLL with the installer (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235299.aspx). I've seen this done before, but I'm unsure of the details involved. With this, a "skip if dest exists" flag would might be used to skip installing it every time. Alternatively, the redistributable pack could be downloaded and run during installation (but that can be annoying and blocks offline installs), or statically link the DLL during build (http://stackoverflow.com/a/6977050), with a side-effect of a slightly larger exe.

[bchintx]

@le717 Good observation. In many cases, copying a DLL to exist alongside the exe will work. Unfortunately, just placing the Microsoft runtime DLLs next to the exe won't work. As side-by-side assemblies, they actually need to be installed properly.

For anyone facing this issue though, the easiest workaround is to simply install the libraries from the Microsoft redistributable installer, which is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555

[bchintx]

quick note: just tried to reproduce this with a "clean" VM images of Win 7 and 8, but couldn't reproduce. Apparently, the images we have in the lab already have the C runtime libraries installed.

Anyway, I think I have the right changes needed for our WiX script, but I'll need to wait to confirm the fix until I can rebuild a Win machine to test it.

[abose]

Closing this as no one has reported this issue in a long time.