What are api-ms-* dlls and why are they copied?

[bicobus]

I recently did a cxFreeze build using github actions, and found out that cxFreeze will copy those files from the PowerShell folder (C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\).

What are those files?
Are they needed?
Why are they needed?
If not, how do I prevent their copy?

I did not set the include_msvcr option, at all. Is it related to it? Sorry if those questions seems ridiculous, I simply have no idea what the api-ms-* dlls are about.

[marcelotduarte]

They are copied from the first directory in the PATH.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows-c0514201-7fe6-95a3-b0a5-287930f3560c
https://cx-freeze.readthedocs.io/en/stable/faq.html#microsoft-visual-c-redistributable-package

[bicobus]

Reading the cx_Freeze doc:

If your license allows you to distribute these files, specify the include_msvcr option to build_exe to have them distributed automatically.

I did not specify that option, assuming it would be False by default. Am I assuming wrong?

For context, this is the build.

Extent of build_exe:

[tool.distutils.build_exe]
excludes = [
  "tkinter", "gi", "gtk", "PyQt4", "PyQt5", "PyQt6",
  "PySide2", "PySide6", "shiboken2", "shiboken6", "lib2to3"
]
packages = ["xsdata_attrs.hooks"]

[marcelotduarte]

#2192