c++ - DLL dependency question / SetDLLDirectory

Question

I have the following situation and can't come up with any good solution.

I have a C++ application (app.exe) installed in C:ProgFilesMyApp. It needs a bunch of DLLs, which I install in C:ProgFilesMyAppin. I'd like to put them in a subfolder because there are so many of them.

Now when I start app.exe, something needs to let Windows know where the required DLLs are. In the past I was using the PATH environment variable for this, but I can't do this anymore because I will create another application with a separate installer, which uses many of the DLLs that have the same name.

I was thinking of calling SetDLLDirectory at the beginning of the app - but I forgot that because required DLLs are missing, it fails before getting there.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Using the delay load option in conjunction with SetDLLDirectory might work. A delay loaded DLL is dynamically loaded by the system on its first reference. If you are using Visual Studio, you can specify which DLLs are to be delay loaded in the project properties under the Linker Input options. There is a Delay Loaded DLLs field for specifying them. Otherwise, you can specify /DELAYLOAD:mydll.dll in the linker command.