Regular DLL using: MFC Shared vs MFC statically linked

Question

When we create a DLL using Visual studio (VC8 or 9), we get an option as create Regular DLL

 using MFC as shared DLL

or

 using MFC as static library

How are they different? Which one is advisable to use?

Answer 1

A static library means the code you use from the library is included in your executable. Because of this, you don't need to ship the library or require the end user to have it on their machine. However this bloats the size of your executable and ties you to that library version, so if you need to update just the library, you have to ship a new executable.

A shared library calls the library at the time it needs it (runtime) to execute the code, but it requires the user to have it (usually a specific or minimum version) installed on their machine. You can also distribute the required version of the library with your application if you need to.

As for which is better, I don't know. I'm not a Windows C++ or MFC programmer so I couldn't say. On my Linux servers, the applications I write are generally server-side and thus use shared libraries.

It depends on how your application is to be used, distributed, updated, how often the MFC library changes, if it's generally available on user's PCs etc.