Ok, I've come to a conclusion; for the coming release, only msvcrt.dll builds under Visual C++ 6.0 make sense as our binary distribution.
I'm not suggesting we dismiss the potential win of supporting our Studio 2005 compiler users(!) But let's quickly compare... . binary users generally aren't building modules, they need to plug into widely distributed binary components. . source users generally can build anything from source, if they need to. If they want to interface several components, they can build our source tarball with any compiler they like, including the 1 year free license of Studio 2005. . it's pretty trivial to build/install httpd with one of several pretty minimal unix toolchains available. It seems that most of the communites are still in VC 6. Remember the key reason we keep using it, MS dropped support for exporting makefiles. With no makefiles, you are roped into supporting only version x or newer Studio products. With .dsp/.dsw solutions, we can export makefiles on the old reliable VC 6, and users can load/convert these into Studio 2000/03/05. So I'll move ahead with all the msi tweaks required for our changed files, and we can reevaluate the state of things 6 mos or a year from now when we are almost ready to ship Apache X :) That's my conclusion, I'm still more than happy to hear out dissenting opinions. Speak up quick, though, planning to have a package up in /dev/dist by Sunday night for review, and push it out sometime early next week. Bill