best practice for releasing Microsoft dll's in setup

Question

I'm working on a setup which wants to include the Microsoft.Web.Services3 (WSE 3.0) DLL. However, I typically do not like including Microsoft DLL's in our installs except by way of Microsoft's redistributables. There is both a developer and a redist install package available from Microsoft.

So, as a best practice, should I include the single DLL in my install or refer them to one of the WSE 3.0 installs (assuming they do not already have it installed)?

Answer 1

Usually, redistributing any of Microsoft DLLs outside of the redistributable package is forbidden by their EULA, so you might first want to check the appropriate EULA for that DLL.

Generally, I would prefer the redist package since that makes sure that it's correctly "registered" into the system, i.e. if you install a newer version of the redist it gets updated (like DirectX) or not overwritten if it's an older version (also like DirectX).