Getting others to use my apps with Visual C++

I am learning how to build games in Visual C++ and when I upload them so friends can check them out, they all end up with messages saying it can not run. I did some research and found that it is because I am compiling against a Dynamic library instead of a static library. Correct me if I am wrong anywhere please. Upon further research, I found that a lot of people do not advise going this direction but instead include the files needed by my game.

How would 开发者_StackOverflow社区I go about distributing my games to friends and make it real easy for them to just open up my .exe and play the game?

If you link to any DLLs, you also need to ship those along. If you produce a single .exe in your output, you probably need your friends to install the MS Visual Studio redistributable package for your version of visual studio. This is an example link for the VS 2010 one, but the one you give your friends should match your version.

There are essentially two options: Keep everything as-is and provide them with the runtime files (also named Microsoft Visual C++ * Redistributable Package or similar; the * has to be replaced with your version, e.g. 2005, 2008 or 2010). Downloads can be found on Microsoft's download site as well as in your Visual Studio installation folder (look for a folder called "Redist").

Alternative solution: In your project settings you're able to select the runtime environment (under linker options). Change your release build to use "Multithreaded" instead of "Multithreaded-DLL".