DLL Hell

DLL hell is an umbrella term for the complications that arise when one works with dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) used with older Microsoft Windows operating systems,[1] particularly legacy 16-bit editions, which all run in a single memory space. DLL hell can appear in many different ways, wherein affected programs may fail to run correctly, if at all. It is the Windows ecosystem-specific form of the general concept dependency hell.

  1. ^ "Avoiding DLL Hell: Introducing Application Metadata in the Microsoft .NET Framework". Microsoft. October 2000.