How should open source libraries be used on Windows?

There are many open-source libraries that can be compiled with Visual Studio. I'm porting a program from Linux to Windows, but it depends on a number of libraries. I don't know what the best practices regarding libraries are on Windows.

On Linux, these libraries are typically part of the distribution. To use sqlite on Debian, for example, you need only to install libsqlite3-dev and the include files and libraries (both static and dynamic) are automatically installed and available to your program.

If you need a different version than your distribution supplies, you can compile it in your home director开发者_Python百科y, install it to ~/include and ~/lib, and set the appropriate environment variables so that your compiler includes those directories in its search path.

What is the best way to use libraries that are distributed as source on Windows? If I link dynamically rather than statically, is there an easy way to copy required DLLs into the output directory to ease redistribution (assuming license requirements are met)?

Option 1 - Projects that have binary distributions for windows / do not build in DevStudio.

E.g. OpenSSL.

Projects like OpenSSL are best downloaded to their own folder and built using their own scripts. OpenSSL typically installs itself to C:\OpenSSL on windows builds, so one done, you can add C:\OpenSSL\include and C:\OpenSSL\lib to your project environment to access the OpenSSL headers and Libs. The actual dll files you will need to copy from C:\OpenSSL\bin into your projects staging folder (normally your SolutionDir\Debug or Release).

Once youve gone through the hassle of building OpenSSL once, you don't want to do it again. Or, if you've downloaded the binary distribution, its best left alone. Just document to others which binary distribution you used so they can set up their Visual Studio build environment appropriately.

Option 2 - Small libraries that are easy to create Visual Studio Projects for (or already have). Lua and sqllite fall into this category. For projects that are small enough, it is not inconvenient to simply add them to your solution in a sub folder. This way you can get their outputs built directly to the solutions output folder, and you do not have to bundle pre-build binary files in your solution making it far easier to share the project with others.

Option 3 - As an alternative you could create your own standardized folder for the products of open source projects. Create C:\oss\include, c:\oss\lib, c:\oss\bin etc, add these paths to DevStudios lib and include paths, add c:\oss\bin to the systems PATH variable, as you build each OSS project, copy the appropriate files to these locations.

Again, while convenient, this setup makes it diffucult to replicate the build environment on a 2nd PC, so you might want to keep the entire C:\oss tree in source control as well.

On windows the easiest way is to build your own DLLs and include them in the program directory.

Yes it uses a bit more space, but HD are large these days and avoids a lot of headaches of incompatible versions (DLL hell). Windows also suffers a few more wrinkles with versions of libs built with different compilers so shipping your own builds is safest