Runtime Issues While Mixing Libraries from Different Versions of Visual Studio

Question

I have encountered an unexpected Access Error while running a project I\'ve built using two different versions of Visual Studio. My general configuration is as follows:

Answer 1

There is no guarantee of library binary compatibility between major versions of MSVC. STL code is mostly template code that gets expanded into your code. So you're static libraries probably have incompatible chunks of STL code inside of them.

In general, this shouldn't be a problem, unless that STL code is part of the interface to the library. For example, if you pass iterators or a reference to a vector from one library to another, you're in trouble.

The best solution is to build everything with the same version of the compiler. If you can't do that (e.g., if the one of the libraries is from a third-party), you're probably stuck.

Answer 2

You can't use different STL implementation in the same project. This means even different versions from the same compiler. If your LibA has a function that accepts std::vector as an argument you are only allowed to pass vector object from STL that LibA was built with. This is why many C++ libraries expose only C API.

Either you change your API or you rebuild all your projects using the same compiler.

You are doing something that you shouldn't. You are in the world of undefined behavior. There is no point in trying to debug this particular crash. Even if you managed to make this line work you would get a new crash somewhere else.