User Guide

using newer versions of Visual Studio. This FUD essentially stems from two misconceptions:

1. Unfortunately, it is believed by many that the Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 EULA explicitly

forbids linking with GPL'ed programs. This belief is probably due to an improper interpretation

of the Visual Studio 2003 Toolkit EULA, which places redistribution restrictions only on

SOURCE CODE SAMPLES which accompany the toolkit.

2. Other maintainers believe that the GPL itself forbids using Visual Studio 2003, since one of the

required support libraries (MSVCR71.DLL) does not ship with the Windows operating system.

This is also a wrongful interpretation, and the GPL FAQ explicitly addresses this issue.

Similar applies to Visual Studio 2005 and alike.

So in effect it should be perfectly legal to compile Wireshark and distribute / run it if it was com-

piled with any MSVC version > V6!

4.4.3. cl.exe (C Compiler)

The following table gives an overview of the possible Microsoft toolchain variants and their specific

C compiler versions "ordered by release date":

Compiler Package cl.exe #define _MSC_VER required C-Runtime

DLL

Visual Studio 6.0 6.0 1200 msvcrt.dll

(Version 6)

Visual Studio .NET

(2002)

7.0 1300 msvcr70.dll

.NET Framework SDK

version 1.0a

Visual Studio .NET

2003

7.10 1310 msvcr71.dll

.NET Framework SDK

Version 1.1

Visual Studio 2005

8.0 1400 msvcr80.dll

Visual C++ 2005 Ex-

press Edition

.NET Framework 2.0

SDK

Windows SDK for

Windows Vista and

.NET Framework 3.0

Runtime Components

Visual Studio 2008

(Code Name "Orcas")

9.0 1500 msvcr90.dll

Tool Reference