Are C++ libs created with different versions of Visual Studio compatible with each other?

Question

I am creating a open-source C++ library using Visual Studio 2005. I would like to provide prebuilt libs along with the source code. Are these libs, built with VS2005, also going to work with newer versions of Visual Studio (esp VS Express Edition 2008)? Or do I need to provide separate libs per VS version?

Answer 1

Not normally, no. Libraries built with the VS tools are linked into the 'Microsoft C Runtime' (called MSVCRT followed by a version number) which provides C and C++ standard library functions, and if you attempt to run a program that requires two different versions of this runtime then errors will occur.

On top of this, different compiler versions churn out different compiled code and the code from one compiler version frequently isn't compatible with another apart from in the most trivial cases (and if they churned out the same code then there would be no point having different versions :))