[pjc50]

> You don't support Windows XP and Windows 10 either with the same binary.

I think you picked a terrible example there, because quite often people do; certainly Vista upwards is quite normal (that was the transition point for lots of APIs).

Windows is much clearer about how you're supposed to solve "DLL hell". You have the OS libraries, which provide a stable API; COM, where interfacing is done at runtime dynamically; and for everything else you put it in your application's directory.

Theoretically if COM components aren't interchangeable - the API has expanded - they should have a different CLSID and therefore not clash.