Side-by-side assembly
Standard for executable files in Windows operating systems / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Side-by-side assembly?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Side-by-side assembly (SxS, or WinSxS on Microsoft Windows) technology is a standard for executable files in Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, and later versions of Windows that attempts to alleviate problems (collectively known as "DLL Hell") that arise from the use of dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) in Microsoft Windows. Such problems include version conflicts, missing DLLs, duplicate DLLs, and incorrect or missing registration. In side-by-side, Windows stores multiple versions of a DLL in the %systemroot%\WinSxS
directory, and loads them on demand. This reduces dependency problems for applications that include a side-by-side manifest.
This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2016) |
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 and 2008 employ SxS with all C runtime libraries. However, runtime libraries in Visual C++ 2010 no longer use this technology; instead, they include the version number of a DLL in its file name, which means that different versions of one DLL will technically be completely different DLLs now.[1][2]
SxS is also the technological basis for registration-free COM activation. Only in-process COM servers may be activated this way.