How to build the 6.0 MFC and the CRT DLLs with MSLU

FAQ

Before you start:

1. Install Visual Studio 6 with SP5 including all necessary files.

   The first thing you need to do is make sure that when you install Visual Studio 6 that you check on both the Unicode MFC versions, and the CRT source code. Both are turned off by default. After this install Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 5.

2. Identify the folders and files you will be modifying.

   If you installed to the default locations, all of the files we need to change are contained in the tree \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98. Find the MFC\SRC folder and the CRT\SRC folder.

3. Install the Platform SDK and copy the unicows.lib file to your VC98\LIB folder.

How to build the CRT with MSLU

The first thing we want to do is make a backup of our VC98\Lib folder. We will be replacing files in it, so if we need to go back (or switch between MSLU and non-MSLU version of the CRT) we can always do that.

Secondly, let's copy the VC98\CRT\SRC folder to a comfortable place so we can change it and build from it. For example, we'll copy it to the root of C: so we have a folder called C:\SRC, available for quick access from the command line.

When building the CRT we are actually building three DLLs: MSVCRT.DLL, MSVCP60.DLL, and MSVCIRT.DLL. Since we are building both debug and release builds it makes a total of six DLLs we need to build.

There is a provided batch file bldwin95.bat that will build the all CRT DLLs but the makefile does not seem to be there. The Makefile IS provided, but it a hidden manner. The three files are ext_mkf, ext_mkf.inc, and ext_mkf.sub. If you copy these to makefile, makefile.inc, and makefile.sub then the batch file will work, i.e.

copy ext_mkf Makefile 
copy ext_mkf.inc Makefile.inc 
copy ext_mkf.sub Makefile.sub 

At the top of makefile there is a section that controls the naming of the three DLLs to build. For this purpose we will use the name MSLU as a prefix to all of the DLLs instead of the standard name MSVC. So the six names of the DLLs we will create are:

MSLURT.DLL MSLURTD.DLL MSLUP60.DLL MSLUP60D.DLL MSLUIRT.DLL MSLUIRTD.DLL 

Warning: Since most people who follow these steps will probably use the exact names given here, please be sure to keep these versions of the DLLs in your own private directory when you use them.

The default names provided in the makefile are _SAMPLE_, SAMPLE_I, and SAMPLE_P. There are associated RC and DEF files for each of these names, so we need to copy them to the new names, i.e.

copy _SAMPLE_.RC MSLURT.RC 
copy SAMPLE_I.RC MSLUIRT.RC 
copy SAMPLE_P.RC MSLUP60.RC 
copy SAMPLE_I.DEF MSLUIRT.DEF 
copy SAMPLD_I.DEF MSLUIRTD.DEF 
copy SAMPLE_P.DEF MSLUP60.DEF 
copy SAMPLD_P.DEF MSLUP60D.DEF 
copy Intel\_SAMPLE_.DEF Intel\MSLURT.DEF 
copy Intel\_SAMPLD_.DEF Intel\MSLURTD.DEF 

Next we need to change the LIBRARY name in each of the above DEF files to match the name of the DEF file. Open up each file in notepad to make the change.

The provided makefile needs some minor changes to get it to work properly and link with Unicows.lib.

1. Change the top block of defines to the following:

   RETAIL_DLL_NAME=MSLURT 
   RETAIL_LIB_NAME=MSLURT 
   RETAIL_DLLCPP_NAME=MSLUP60 
   RETAIL_LIBCPP_NAME=MSLUP60 
   RETAIL_DLLIOS_NAME=MSLUIRT 
   RETAIL_LIBIOS_NAME=MSLUIRT 
   DEBUG_DLL_NAME=MSLURTD 
   DEBUG_LIB_NAME=MSLURTD 
   DEBUG_DLLCPP_NAME=MSLUP60D 
   DEBUG_LIBCPP_NAME=MSLUP60D 
   DEBUG_DLLIOS_NAME=MSLUIRTD 
   DEBUG_LIBIOS_NAME=MSLUIRTD 

2. The path to the Visual Studio folder needs to be changed (the default is MSDEV)

   V6TOOLS=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98 

3. Some of the commands need to be surrounded in quotes because of the location of the VC98 folder has spaces in the path.

   line 331 change to:

   RC_INCS="-I$(V6TOOLS)\include" 

   line 1728, 1770, 1810, 1853, 1898, 1941 change to:

    "$(V6TOOLS)\include\winver.h" \ 

4. We want to fix the PDB file creation

   line 381-383 change to:

   RELEASE_DLL_DBG_PDB = $(PDBDIR_CPU)\$(DEBUG_DLL_NAME).pdb 
   RELEASE_DLLCPP_DBG_PDB = $(PDBDIR_CPU)\$(DEBUG_DLLCPP_NAME).pdb 
   RELEASE_DLLIOS_DBG_PDB = $(PDBDIR_CPU)\$(DEBUG_DLLIOS_NAME).pdb 
   
   line 474 change to:
    
   $(CRT_RELDIR) $(RELDIR_CPU) : 
    
   line 987 change to:
    
   xdll : $(OBJROOT) $(OBJCPUDIR) $(OBJDIR_DLL_DBG) $(RELDIR_CPU) xothers \ 
    
   after line 1746 add:
    
   -pdb:$(RELEASE_DLL_PDB) 
    
   after line 1789 add:
    
   -pdb:$(RELEASE_DLLCPP_PDB) 
    
   after line 1829 add:
    
   -pdb:$(RELEASE_DLLIOS_PDB) 
    

5. We want to link to unicows.lib before any other lib files.

   line 1750, 1794, 1835, 1878, 1925, 1969 change to:

   unicows.lib kernel32.lib advapi32.lib user32.lib gdi32.lib shell32.lib comdlg32.lib version.lib mpr.lib rasapi32.lib winmm.lib winspool.lib vfw32.lib oleacc.lib oledlg.lib 

   Once we make these changes, we are ready to build the DLLs. It's simple - just do the following from a command prompt in the C:\SRC folder:

   set V6TOOLS=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98 
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\BIN\VCVARS32" 
   BLDWIN95 

   Once the DLLs finish building they will be in a subfolder called BUILD\INTEL. The Libs, PDBs, and Maps are also in that folder.

6. Now we've got 6 libs (3 debug, 3 release) we can link to. Let's copy those new libs back to the original names of the libs, e.g.

   copy MSLURT.LIB MSVCRT.LIB 
   copy MSLURTD.LIB MSVCRTD.LIB 
   copy MSLUP60.LIB MSVCPRT.LIB 
   copy MSLUP60D.LIB MSVCPRTD.LIB 
   copy MSLUIRT.LIB MSVCIRT.LIB 
   copy MSLUIRTD.LIB MSVCIRTD.LIB 

   The reason we do this is so we can link our existing apps (and build MFC) without having to muck around with the libraries that they link to. The Libs still point to the newly named DLLs, even though they don't share the same names as the new ones anymore.

7. Now copy the 6 MSVC libs to the VC98\Lib folder (overwriting the existing ones)

The CRT build is now done.

Before proceeding any further we need to close the command prompt that we used to build the CRT because it created certain environment variables that will cause compile errors in the next step, building the Unicode version of MFC.

Building MFC Unicode version with MSLU

First we will make a backup of the following folders (and all subfolders of): VC98\MFC\LIB, and VC98\MFC\SRC so we can restore them later if necessary.

Building the Unicode version of MFC is slightly easier than building the CRT. The Unicode version of MFC is actually 5 different DLLs:

• MFC42U.DLL (Unicode Release)
• MFC42UD.DLL (Unicode Debug)
• MFCN42UD.DLL (Unicode Debug - Network classes)
• MFCO42UD.DLL (Unicode Debug - OLE classes)
• MFCD42UD.DLL (Unicode Debug - Database classes)

Notice that the release version is a single DLL whereas the debug version is split up into 4 different DLLs. Presumably, this was done to reduce load times when debugging. This makes it a little less straightforward that it should be.

To build MFC, there are 4 provided Makefiles in the VC98\MFC\SRC folder named:

• MFCDLL.MAK
• MFCNET.MAK
• MFCOLE.MAK
• MFCDB.MAK

The MFCDLL.MAK builds the first two DLLs, and each of the others builds the rest.