A dockerized C++ windows console application exited with code 3221225781

Question

I Have written a very simple c++ hello world program

#pragma once
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

int main()
{
   std::cout << "Hello Docker world!\n";
   return 0;
}

This is build as a release x64 windows console application and thus produces an exe

than I dockerize this program using the following dockerfile

FROM microsoft/windowsservercore

ADD ./DockerHello.exe /DockerHello.exe

# Run exe when the container launches
CMD C:\DockerHello.exe

However when i use docker run it will show nothing and when i use docker ps -a I see that it has exited with code 3221225781

From some online searching I understand that this apparently means that I am missing some dll or so, but I have no idea how to find out which?

Can anybody help me? Or tell me how I can get a simple c++ console application working in docker?

Answer 1

As confirmed in the comments, the issue stems from the runtime library not being present on the Docker image for code compiled from MSVC.

To solve this, you may either:

1. Statically link to the runtime, using the /MT flag.
2. Install the correct runtime on the docker image.

Static Linking

The /MT flag (or variants) must be passed to msbuild, which through Visual Studio can be done as follows (from Microsoft's documentation):

Open the project's Property Pages dialog box. For details, see How to: Open Project Property Pages. Expand the C/C++ folder. Select the Code Generation property page. Modify the Runtime Library property.

Install Runtime

To install the correct runtime, you must install the redistributable while building of the docker image.

ADD $url /vc_redist.exe
RUN C:\vc_redist.exe /quiet /install

For Visual Studio, these are the correct URL (as of today's date, feel free to edit to update):

Where the $url is the path to the correct Visual Studio Redistributable (links provided below):

• Visual Studio 2017, x86, x86-64
• Visual Studio 2015, x86, x86-64
• Visual Studio 2013, x86, x86-64

Docker Image Selection

As the OP notes in the comments, the microsoft/nanoserver image is sufficient when using static runtime linking, however, if using shared runtime linking, you should use the microsoft/windowsservercore image, otherwise, the installation of the redistributable fails.