Visual Studio 2008, Runtime Libraries usage advice

Question

I would like some information on the runtime libraries for Visual Studio 2008. Most specifically when should I consider the DLL versions and when should I consider the Static versions.

The Visual Studio documentation delineates the technical differences in terms of DLL dependencies and linked libraries. But I'm left wondering why I should want to use one over the other. More important, why should I want to use the multi-threaded DLL runtime when this obviously forces my application into a DLL dependency, whereas the static runtime has no such requirement on my application user machine.

Answer 1

Linking dynamically to the runtime libraries complicates deployment slightly due to the DLL dependency, but also allows your application to take advantage of updates (bug fixes or more likely performance improvements) to the MS runtime libraries without being recompiled.

Statically linking simplifies deployment, but means that your application must be recompiled against newer versions of the runtime in order to use them.