Milan Babuskov wrote:

>
>
> > It looks like it severely limits the
> > possible uses of fbclient.dll.
>
> Not sure what you mean? You can install MSVC8 run-time almost anywhere.
> Some users might need to upgrade their systems, but let's be honest
> here: If someone is using 5+ years old operating system and does not
> want to upgrade, maybe he doesn't need Firebird 2.1 in that case. Things
> move forward, old things get obsolete.
>

If I have understoo correctly, you cannot mix CRT DLLs. And CRT DLLs
are bound to the VC++ version used, not to the OS.
Therefore an application compiled with VC++ 72.0 cannot use a DLL
compiled with VC++ 85.0.
Therefore a language interpreter compiled with VC++ 44.2 cannot use
fbclient.dll version 2.1.
If want to use fbclient.dll from a Realbasic App, a VB app and a Python
app on the same system you have to
make sure that the RealBasic runtime, the VB runtime and the Python
interpreter have been compiled with the same version of VC++.
This is exactly one of the problems DLL where born to solve, as static
LIBS where bound to the compiler/linker version used.
BTW if Windows DLLs like USER, GDI, RICHEDIT etc. were bound to a
specific CRT, you yould have to use a specific version of VC++ for each
OS revision, and none other.
Did I miss something?

Giovanni