Distributing a C program

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03-19-2009
McLovin V

Distributing a C program

This is my first ever post on this site. I'm pretty much a beginner programmer and am taking my second semester of C Language.

That being said, I've created a fairly simple program using C in Visual Studio 2008 and wish to use it on other machines. I'm not even sure if this is the correct way about doing this, but I just copyied the program.exe file out of the debug folder within my project folder and am trying to execute that on other computers. On my computer it works fine, but on others (that don't have VS 2008 installed) I get an error saying that "the application configuration is incorrect". I asked my professor, and he mentioned that the machine has to be running .net framework 3.5, which they both are. Also, that program.exe file could have something to do with a debug version of that program.

I have a feeling that it is something small that I'm not selecting before compiling the program or I need to run some kind of wizard. I have no idea.

This is very annoying being able to have a program that runs fine in the developement environment, but not able to be distributed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff
03-19-2009
Joelito

They need to C 2008 runtime.
03-19-2009
SMurf

Are you sure your program is in plain C? The only possible prerequisite it should have is an up to date version of the CRT DLL. The standard version of this is MSVCRT.DLL but Visual Studio 2003 and above introduced their own DLLs.

There should be no reliance on the .NET Framework.
03-20-2009
novacain

What version of MSVC 2008?

IIRC MSVC 'Express' editions (the free ones) can not create distributable apps.
03-20-2009
ulillillia

Quote:

Originally Posted by novacain

IIRC MSVC 'Express' editions (the free ones) can not create distributable apps.

Actually they can, but it takes quite a bit of effort. I have an old post here from, I think, late April or early May of 2007 of someone assisting me with getting one of my programs released using the free version (but this is with 2005 though, not 2008).
03-21-2009
McLovin V

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

I'm writing the code in plain ol' C language.

Since VS does not have a wizard when creating a new project in C, I'm creating as though it was in C++, but then changing the source file to a ".c" extension.