I’m a one man show developing a C++ Windows application for a customer. Over the past several months we’ve been running to the same problems with missing DLL dependencies on customer machines. Despite my best efforts something keeps going wrong and we get angry emails back. My boss and my boss’s boss are angry with me and the customers aren’t happy.
I’m hoping you guys can help out and give suggestions/ideas on how to get the deliverables in order. Before some of the obvious:
- I have no test machine. That is, I can’t replicate the customer environment nor attempt to install the app on a “clean” system to catch gotchas before shipping.
- I’ve tried using depends.exe to track down what versions of the DLLs my project is dependent upon. I’m shipping our code with the redistributables I’ve been able to find that way. After that it’s an angry customer email waiting game.
- I do have access to a 64-bit machine and 32-bit machine to install new builds. It always works there.
- I’m required to use a third-party DLL which can not be registered (it’s buggy as hell.)
- I’m not supposed to use Install Shield, any other automated installer, or write an install script.
- I provide written instructions on how to get the app installed (unzip, double click exe file.)
I’m tired of taking heat for this stuff. What am I missing that I could be doing?
What should I ask in terms of support from my employer? How should I ask for that support in a way that they’ll provide it?
Update:
Virtual Machine torpedoed. They don’t want me spending all of my times setting up and tearing down customer configurations. Instead, I’m now working with the customer to get a base configuration so that I know the exact machine set-up I’m supposed to target. If it’s not up to that spec, I no longer have to care. At least something went somewhere… although I’d still like a test machine.
If you don’t have a test machine, can you at least use a virtual machine with a clean Windows installation?