David,

Thanks for that link - it is very useful.

A couple of comments.

Firebird is currently being distributed with the msvcrt.dll that ships
with Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 5. It appears in fact to be a later
version than the dll mentioned on the web page - it is build 6.10.8637.0
rather than 6.0.8797.0.

The article itself appears to indicate that the data refers to the
vcredist.exe that comes with SP4. As SP5 is the most recent service pack
I reckon that Firebird is actually shipping the correct dll.

I'm not sure that vcredist.exe is the 'official' way to do anything. The
article carries this disclaimer:

> Vcredist.exe is not a full-featured installation package. As such,
> it is not a recommended redistribution method for the preceding files.
> This package does not communicate error messages back to the program
> or user that is starting Vcredist.exe. Therefore, Microsoft highly
> recommends that programs starting Vcredist.exe first check for
> available disk space (approximately 10 MB), read-only system files,
> administrator privileges, and a valid TEMP directory. The absence
> of any of these prerequisites can cause this package to incorrectly
> install some of the files onto the target system.

Looks like Microsoft have as much trouble working all this out as the
rest of us.

I know a warning in the Firebird install appears to be a cop out - but
it seems to be as good as the other options, like silently messing up a
users system. In fact, the warning appears because a check has been made
and the existing dll has been found to be an earlier version than the
Firebird one. But the choice is then given to the user whether they want
to install or not. I guess this should be made clearer in the prompt.


Paul
--

Paul Reeves
http://www.ibphoenix.com
taking InterBase further