Microsoft Windows configuration notes

Microsoft™ Visual C++ version

When using C-Extensions, you need Microsoft Visual C++ compiler to compile and link your C sources. Make sure you have installed the software package corresponding to the MSVC version installed on your system. The MSVC version is identified in the software package name.

Checking binary dependencies

Microsoft Visual C++ provides the dumpbin utility to extract information from a binary file.

Use the /dependents option to check for DLL dependencies:

C:\ dumpbin /dependents mylib.dll 
Microsoft (R) COFF/PE Dumper Version 7.10.3077 
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Dump of file mylib.dll

File Type: EXECUTABLE IMAGE

Image has the following dependencies:

isqlt09a.dll
MSVCR71.dll
KERNEL32.dll

Summary

1000 .data
1000 .rdata
1000 .text

Changing the stack size of fglrun

On Windows™ platforms, the fglrun.exe binary has a predefined C stack size. In some rare cases (for example, when programs do deep recursion), the stack size of fglrun.exe binary needs to be changed to avoid a stack overflow. The stack size of fglrun can be changed this permanently by patching the EXE file with the Microsoft Visual C++ editbin utility. Check the stack size by running the dumpbin utility on fglrun.exe as follows:

C:\ dumpbin /headers %FGLDIR%\bin\fglrun.exe

Search for the line containing "stack reserve" words in the OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES section:

OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES
    ...
    100000 size of stack reserve

The stack size is displayed in hexadecimal value. So for example, a value 100,000 means1,048,567 bytes = 1MB.

In order to modify the stack size of fglrun.exe, run the editbin utility on fglrun.exe with the /stack option:

C:\ editbin /stack:1000000 %FGLDIR%\bin\fglrun.exe

See Microsoft Visual C++ documentation for more details.