Visual C++ projects typically use the traditional Windows Installer setup for deployment. To prepare a Windows Installer deployment, you package your application in a setup.exe file and distribute that file, together with an installer package (.msi). Users then run setup.exe to install your application.

You package your application by adding a Setup project to your solution; when built, it creates the setup and installer package files that you distribute to users. For more information, see Windows Installer Deployment.

When a C/C++ application is built using functionality provided by the Visual C++ libraries, it becomes dependent on the presence of those libraries at runtime. In order for the application to run, it must link, either statically or dynamically, to the necessary Visual C++ libraries. If an application dynamically links to a Visual C++ library, then when it runs that library must be present so it can be loaded. On the other hand, if the application statically links to a Visual C++ library, then it does not need the corresponding DLLs to be present on the user's computer. Static linking, however, has some negative effects, such as the increasing the size of the application files, and making maintenance potentially more difficult. For more information, see Advantages of Using DLLs.

Visual C++ libraries are packaged as DLLs, and all necessary libraries for C/C++ applications are installed by Visual Studio on the developer's computer. However, when deploying your application to your users, it is not feasible in most cases to require them to install Visual Studio in order to run your application. It is important to be able to redistribute just the parts of Visual C++ that are required by your application to run correctly.

This section discusses how to understand what files from Visual C++ you need to redistribute with your applications, what packaging and deployment alternatives are available, and how to resolve some other related issues.

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