[Python-Dev] runtime dlls on Windows

[Steve Dower]

On 26May2016 1453, Sebastian Krause wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> BUT -- Steve Dower seems to have identified that the wonders of dll hell
>>> never cease, and this isn't possible anyway. Oh well.
>>
>> I'm not entirely grasping what's happening here. There are multiple
>> versions of msvcp140.dll floating around out there; what happens if
>> one app requires one of them and another requires another? Can you
>> simply say "take the newer one"? Is there a way to instantly recognize
>> that there's a newer one available, and ignore the older one?
>> Versioning is a *pain*.
>
> Windows executables can and should ask for specific versions of the
> DLLs in the manifest (an XML file embedded in the EXE). Details
> here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-side_assembly

This has been deprecated. It sounded like a great idea at the time (~8 
years ago) but caused more problems than it solved. Python 2.7 and 3.2 
(IIRC) were the last versions to use this feature.

The way to get the newest version is to run the installer, which will 
upgrade if it has a newer version or leave the old one alone.

Cheers,
Steve