Redistributing Controls

Since ActiveX controls are dynamically linked, you need to redistribute the ActiveX controls with the applications that use them. The Controls and Components Gallery will display all ActiveX controls on your computer. However, when adding an ActiveX control to a redistributable project, you must consider the following legal and technical issues:

Visual Studio Licensed Controls: Since Visual Studio bundles several development tools in addition to Visual C++, Visual Studio licensees will also have ActiveX controls specific to the other tools installed onto their computer. For example, the Chart control is distributed with Visual Basic, which also ships in Visual Studio. Thus if you are using Visual C++ as a part of a Visual Studio license, you will be able to use the Chart control. However if you purchased only Visual C++, you will not have a license to redistribute it.

Design Time and Run Time Licenses: Microsoft distributes some controls from third parties. These controls may come with a requirement for both a Design-Time license for development, and a Run-Time license for distribution. See the \Redist\Redist.wri file on Visual C++ CD 1 for more information on redistribution issues.

Distributing Dependent Files: Often, it is not enough to ship the ActiveX control with your application. The control may come with other dependent files that should be distributed along with the ActiveX control. For example, the new data-bound controls should be distributed with the binding manager (MSBind.dll) and the formatting objects (MSStdFmt.dll) DLLs. These objects provide support for common databinding functionality, and the data-bound controls will not bind properly without them.

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