Bye-bye manifests!

November 6, 2010

Here’s a very interesting development, brought to my attention by a fellow developer:

Microsoft is doing away with the manifest scheme in Visual Studio 2010. From Deployment in Visual C++ 2010:

Differences between Visual C++ 2008 and Visual C++ 2010

The most significant changes between Visual C++ 2008 and Visual C++ 2010 are:

* Visual C++ libraries no longer depend on manifests and are no longer installed in the WinSxS folder. * Dependent applications and libraries no longer require manifest information. * Local deployment no longer requires a satellite manifest. …

To me, the manifest scheme just traded one problem for another. And the problem traded away (DLL issues) was one I never had.