Error loading plugin on Windows

[Stefan Riedmann]

I'm developing a plugin which works perfectly on Mac and my Win10 Professional machine (64 bit)

When I install the same plugin on another test machine (Win10 Pro, 64 bit), I get an error 'Error loading plugin' on Illustrator startup. The only visible difference is that the new test machine has everything in Spanish instead of English, but that can't be a problem, can it?

On all machines I have Illustrator 22.1 installed

I couldn't find any helpful logs whatsoever to narrow down the problem.

What can I do for further analysis, or try to fix the issue?

Any help is very appreciated!

Stefan

[Stefan Riedmann]

We found out this:  ScriptMessage.aip imports functions from msvcp140d.dll, vcruntime140d.dll, ucrtbased.dll, vcruntime140.dll. It is part of Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable.

So this made me think that the problem is using VisualStudio 2017. So I installed VS2015 and compiled an original (untouched) example from Adobe with that (using Release x64 configuration). But the problem persists.

[LeoTaro]

If you use VS2015 instead, the plugin will just try to load different versions of the runtime dlls and if they are not on the test machine either you will get the same problem. Try building with the static versions of the runtime libraries:

Re: Error loading plugins CC 2014

[Stefan Riedmann]

Thanks for your answer. The runtime library was set to 'Multi-threaded Debug Dll' which I changed to non-debug. But then I get build errors 😞

[LeoTaro]

You want to change it to the non-dll version, i.e. "Multi-threaded Debug". If you want to do a release build instead of a debug build change the build configuration.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJ0vC.png

You will then have to change the run time library setting for the release build, from "Multi-threaded Dll" to "Multi-threaded"

[Stefan Riedmann]

I did change it to 'Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)' - I wrote it wrong in my last post, sorry. But that's where the build errors appeared.

[LeoTaro]

There are four multi threaded options:

Multi-threaded

Multi-threaded Debug

Multi-threaded DLL

Multi-threaded Debug DLL

For a Debug build only the ones with "Debug" in will work, the others are for the release build. Your screenshot shows a release build so "Multi-threaded DLL" should work as this is the default setting for a release build. The errors you are getting are for missing debug symbols, which you would only normally get with a debug build.

[Stefan Riedmann]

LeoTaro  wrote

[...] The errors you are getting are for missing debug symbols, which you would only normally get with a debug build.

Agreed, but looks like my case is not 'normal'. I set everything to Release, and still this happens. The other non-debug setting (Multi-threaded) leads to even more compile errors in a Release build.

[Stefan Riedmann · Accepted solution]

Ah I found it. FINALLY 🙂

In the Preprocessor settings, there was still the _DEBUG definition set - for release builds! So this was really a problem coming directly form Adobe. I hope they fix that soon! LeoTaro​ are you working for Adobe, or would you know who to contact so they update the API examples?

Anyway a very big thank you for your help! I really appreciate it!

Best regards,

Stefan