title: Microsoft Visual C++ runtime versions? Do I need to keep 'em all?
body: <p>I've been looking around and I'm not sure I see a clear answer to this so I'm sorry if this has been asked before; my "Google-Fu" is failing me.</p>
  
  <p>We are developing software against .NET Framework but historically we have had to include a number of 3rd party components. Also, historically, these tended to come with various dependencies on Microsoft Visual Studio C++ runtime versions. This has led to us distributing as part of our initial installation process:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2005 Redistributable (SP1) - build 8.0.61001
  Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2008 Redistributable       - build 9.0.30729.6161
  Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2010 Redistributable       - build 10.0.40129
  Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2012 Redistributable       - build 11.0.61030
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But as the years have gone on many of the 3rd party components we used have been replaced with newer and better ones, and we include them to our Projects through NuGet. And I'm finding that as I install our software on systems without installing the above first most of our applications are working perfectly normally without errors. So I'm starting to think a lot of the above are no longer necessary.</p>
  
  <p>Ideally I would just like to chuck 'em all. Relieve the pressure on our support staff to install all these components as well as our software when setting up machines for first use.</p>
  
  <p>It would be great if I could just tell them <em>"look, just install VC++ redistributable version xyz and anything that needs one of the above four builds will work just fine"</em></p>
  
  <p>I see many resources online claiming that, for example, the 2017 redistributable replaces the 2015 one, and so on but <strong>does that backward compatibility go all the way back to the 2005 SP1 version?</strong></p>
  
  <p>My second question is a bit more generic and I don't really expect many answers to that one but.</p>
  
  <p><strong>are there any well known 3rd party developer tools that you know are using one of the four Redistributables mentioned in my list above</strong>? For example, we use Crystal Reports runtime 13.0.17 - oh how I wish we could dump that and move on .... And one of our support staff has already identified that that <strong>sometimes</strong> won't install if the 2005 SP1 runtime is missing. Trying to find out such info from online resources is like looking for a needle in a haystack....</p>