Hi,
This is intended for the dev studio compiler team.
while using filemon to trace an evasive bug in vs8 i saw these lines while linking appear for each system library: (i was loggin just failures in filemon)

10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 QUERY INFORMATION C:\wk\hr\500\src\HRadmin\user32.lib NOT FOUND Attributes: Error
10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\lib\user32.lib NOT FOUND Attributes: Error
10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 DIRECTORY C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\lib\ NO SUCH FILE FileBothDirectoryInformation: user32.lib
10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\atlmfc\lib\user32.lib NOT FOUND Attributes: Error
10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 DIRECTORY C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\atlmfc\lib\ NO SUCH FILE FileBothDirectoryInformation: user32.lib
10:37:38 devenv.exe:812 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\atlmfc\lib\i386\user32.lib PATH NOT FOUND Attributes: Error

this shows that the compiler/linker tries to open each system library from all the available lib search paths - each time again and again in the same order.
why not include an option for the linker to remember after it's first success the correct library path for each library (especially the system libs that really don't tend to move around...)

I wonder if the same is done for include paths in the compiler.