[sleuthkit-users] Windows Precompiled EXEs

[Brian C. <ca...@sl...>]

As was mentioned in another thread, we’re looking at having The Sleuth Kit use a more modern Visual Studio compiler.  I need some feedback on how people are using the precompiled EXEs that we ship.

One of the big changes is that executables now depend on a lot more official microsoft dlls (C runtime dlls). 

Historically, I’ve always tried to make it be so that you can open a ZIP file with the EXEs and run them with no prerequisites. We did this by shipping the 2 or 3 run time dlls in the same folder as the exes. 

With Visual Studio 2015, there are over 40 dlls, not 2!   So, there are two options:

1) We copy all 40+ dlls into the folder like we did before and it is now just a bit more work to find the exe tools in there among all of the dlls (they are all similarly named, which makes it somewhat easy).

2) We make the user run a Microsoft Redistributable Installer to install the needed dlls into the c:\windows folder if they are not already there. We can then ship a ZIP file and the user has to know to install the MS redist or we start shipping a TSK installer that also installs the MS redist.


Opinions?    Do people care more about prerequisites or big folders?