alt Hacker News> Windows explicitly does not want you to link the system libc
This is categorically false; UCRT[1] is a thing. The 'U' stands for universal. Unlike Linux, Windows allows developers to choose their ABI boundary and also ship that boundary if they desire, or use the 'system' one and ask older platforms to install redistributables or Windows update packages. There's the old and new C runtimes in MSVCRT.DLL and UCRTBASE.DLL, the C++ runtime in VCRUNTIME140.DLL, Win32 in KERNEL32.DLL, USER32.DLL and more, and then the stable-ish kernel interfaces in NTDLL.DLL, in order of 'closeness to the kernel'.
And also, 'libc' is a UNIXism; on Windows the term is CRT, for 'C runtime'.
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/cpp/porting/upgrade-your-c...
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That was introduced in Windows 10, Windows history is a long one.
Usually Windows developers will use Win32 directly, ZeroMemory() instead of memset(), and so on.
By "system libc" I'm only referring to msvcrt.dll, found in the Windows directory. Quoting Raymond Chen:
> At some point, the decision was made to just give up and declare it an operating system DLL, to be used only by operating system components.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140411-00/?p=12...
> Unlike Linux, Windows allows developers to choose their ABI boundary
Linux has a stable system call ABI. I can trash the entire user space and boot Linux with init=/my/program if I want.
It's not that Linux doesn't allow developers to choose, it's that Linux doesn't actually control the userspace ABIs. Userspace is whatever we want it to be, and people settled on "GNU/Linux".