[nadams]

> Windows doesn't have standard directories where libraries live.

Visual Studio certainly does:

Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\include

Many people argue don't put libraries there - well then you are back to the original problem. Just as long as you don't overwrite a provided library - there are no issues. And if you do overwrite it - you get a rolled up newspaper and start beating the person who overwrote it.

[lookbothways]

It's a different directory for every version of Visual Studio (and obviously mingw doesn't use it), ergo it's not a standard directory like /usr/include

His point is that it's arguably simpler to tell people to copy a single source file to their project's source tree, than it is to help them find the include dir for whatever compiler they happen to be using. And that it's probably easier to have to manually update this file when the library is patched, than it is to coordinate manual library updates across an entire team without the use of a package manager.