vcruntime140_threads.dll is erroneously vendored when building with Visual Studio 17.8

[adang1345]

Bug report

Bug description:

As described in https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c11-threads-in-visual-studio-2022-version-17-8-preview-2/, Visual Studio 17.8 introduced support for C11 threads, provided by vcruntime140_threads.dll. When I use the Tools\msi\buildrelease.bat script to build Python 3.12.2 on Windows using this Visual Studio version, the vcruntime140_threads.dll ends up in the Python distribution. For instance, the python-3.12.2-embed-amd64.zip file that is built contains the file vcruntime140_threads.dll at its root.

I traced the cause of this to

cpython/PCbuild/pyproject.props

Line 253 in 17689e3

<VCRuntimeDLL Include="$(VCRedistDir)\Microsoft.VC*.CRT\vcruntime*.dll" />

which copies all DLLs matching the pattern vcruntime*.dll from the Visual C++ runtime directory. Starting with Visual Studio 17.8, this directory (which for me is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Redist\MSVC\14.38.33135\x64\Microsoft.VC143.CRT) contains the file vcruntime140_threads.dll.

Given that we aren't using C11 threads on Windows, I think we should change that line to
<VCRuntimeDLL Include="$(VCRedistDir)\Microsoft.VC*.CRT\vcruntime*.dll" Exclude="$(VCRedistDir)\Microsoft.VC*.CRT\vcruntime*_threads.dll" /> to ensure that the file is not included in the Python distribution. I can make a PR for this change.

CPython versions tested on:

3.12

Operating systems tested on:

Windows

Linked PRs

• gh-115167: Exclude vcruntime140_threads.dll with Visual Studio 2022 version 17.8 #115176
• [3.12] gh-115167: Exclude vcruntime140_threads.dll from Windows build output (GH-115176) #115186
• [3.11] gh-115167: Exclude vcruntime140_threads.dll from Windows build output (GH-115176) #115187

[zooba]

Sounds good to me. It shouldn't be getting into the final installers, as we take the vcruntime from this branch for release, but better to explicitly leave it out for now.

[zooba]

Thanks! The backports should auto-merge, so closing this as complete. I'll keep an eye on them in case they fail for some reason.