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Jerome Vuarand wrote:
Stefan Sandberg wrote:
I'm not gonna start reciting msdn documentation on this list, that's
a developers responsibility to first and foremost educate himself
with the toolchain involved.

Actually I might also be interested by the solution in the future. That
message will stay in the list archive for years, but will the links to
your personnal webpage still be valid then ?

Lua is used by many non-programmers. Also being able to compile Lua
doesn't mean you're a programmer or that you know how to use the MSDN
(which is not newbie friendly). So while a simple RTFM is valid for
programmers (and you did a good job by pointing to the right manual, ie.
the MSDN), for non programmers it's probably more irritating than
educating.

Well, I've been writing software commercially since 1983 and one of the worst things I've ever seen is this "manifest" nonsense which Microsoft introduced with VS 2005. Stefan has hinted that the solution to the problem is in MSDN. Maybe it is, but I haven't found out what to do during the last 2 years. I have looked, but never found a clear explanation of what to do. Maybe I'm finding the wrong web pages, or maybe the information I find is just unclear? And maybe, just maybe, I haven't need the information so bad that I couldn't find a different way around the problem in less time (most likely the latter - my solution on at least one occasion was to use a different compiler and linker).

Frankly I find writing x86 assembly language trivial compared to understanding this manifest stuff.

Interestingly none of my customers (all of whom are software engineers of many years experience) that also use VS 2005 know how to fix this problem (it comes up every now and then when I get a bug submitted to me in the form of an example application that will not run due to "manifest" problems).

You get cryptic clues that you need a manifest for something, but no idea how to create one, where to put it, what compiler/linker switches to invoke (if any!). Likewise, no information for what to do if you get an app given to you that has no manifest (although I think the solution is "go back to the author and demand one with a manifest" which puts the problem back at the source (which in this case is back at the Lua build chain for MS Windows). The whole thing is such a bodge.

If there is one bug that needs a crisp, clean, clear explanation in the archive, its this one.

Stephen