Writing a DLL which can be loaded by an app that doesn't initialisethe CRT

[Paul Moore]

I have a 3rd party application which, as far as I understand, does not
use the CRT at all. It has a plugin architecture which allows developers
to write DLLs to expose additional functionality.

If I write a DLL using Visual Studio 2008 Express, it either depends on
MSVCR90, or it statically links the CRT. Whichever way, I seem to get
errors when I load my plugin, about the C runtime not having been
initialised corrrectly (the behaviour doesn't seem 100% consistent - I
assume it's some subtle issue with how I'm building the DLL).

I've read some documents on MSDN, which talk about side by side
assemblies and the like, but I quickly got lost in the terminology
(which is all new to me).

Can anyone give me a relatively short description of how I can write a
DLL, for use from a main app which doesn't use any CRT, in Visual C++
2008 Express? (I'm a command line user by preference, so command line
instructions would suit me best, but I'll work with GUI instructions if
needs be - I just want to get something working! Equally, I've no vested
inteest in msvcr90, if using another CRT gets things working, that'll do
for me).

Pointers to MSDN or other documentation would be fine, but as I said, I
got lost with the stuff on side by side assemblies. I'm trying to avoid
saying "why isn't it as easy as it was with VC6/gcc and msvcrt?" :-))

Thanks,
Paul.