Using tools without installing Visual Studio

Recently another issue has come up another FAQ. Folks try using tools without installing Visual Studio and some additional work has to be done for Beta 1 or CTP of Visual Studio 2005. Just FYI, this is unsupported way to use VC++ tools and my recommendations are as-is with no guarantees. However if a workaround I list below does not work for you, please let me know, I would try to figure what I missed.

So let’s say you have a desktop A with VS2005 installed. You have another desktop B without VS2005 installed. You want to copy the content of "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\" from desktop A to desktop B to build your code on desktop B. Here is what you need to do (obviously, it is one of possible ways to make this work):

1) Copy compiler and tools from "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\" to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\"

c1.dll

c1xx.dll

c2.dll

cl.exe

cvtres.exe

lib.exe

link.exe

mt.exe

nmake.exe

rc.exe

rcdll.dll

\1033\

clui.dll

cvtresui.dll

linkui.dll

nmakeui.dll

2)

Copy CRT assembly from desktop A to desktop B

a. On desktop A, go to %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50124.12800_x-ww_eac26a7b\

b. Copy msvcr80.dll from this folder to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

3) Copy manifest for the CRT assembly

a. On desktop A, go to either %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\Policies\ or %SYSTEMROOT%\WinSxS\Manifests

b. Copy x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50124.12800_x-ww_eac26a7b.Manifest to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

c. Rename this file to “Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest”

4) Copying PDB Support

a. Back desktop A, go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\"

b. Copy msobj80.dll, mspdb80.dll, mspdbcore.dll, mspdbsrv.exe to "%YOUR_TOOLS_FOLDER%\bin\" on desktop B

You should be able to compile and link your code. If you are not, please let me know about this, I would try to investigate why it does not work.