Is MSVCRT under Windows like glibc (libc) under *nix?

Question

I frequently come across Windows programs that bundle in MSVCRT (or their more current equivalents) with the program executables. On a typical PC, I would find many copies of t

Answer 1

Short answer? Because, up until SxS, MSVCRT was not reliably versioned! Can you imagine the madness that would result if programs compiled and tested against libc 5 would silently start using libc 6? That's the situation we were in for many years on Windows. Most of us would just as soon never again trust MS with keeping breaking changes out of a version