I decided on adding a tiny extra project to my visual studio solution which includes only a single header file(for now) with a mutex which allows only 1 thread to output to the console at a time. Since this is a functionality which all of my projects in my solution will need so I thought it will be best to add a separate project for it and add references to it on the other projects.
So I created an empty project named Commons, then added an header file logger_mutex.h and wrote the following code inside it.
#pragma once
#ifdef _DEBUG
#include <mutex>
std::mutex loggerMutex;
#endif
I changed the project type in properties from Application(.exe) to Static Library (.lib). Then I added the include path to this file in the other project properties. Also I added this Commons project as a reference to all my other projects. But now when I try to build the solution it gave the error LINK1104 cannot open file ../path/to/my/output/directory/Commons.lib
I investigated on the output directory and there was no file in there named Commons.lib. I tried rebuilding the Commons project separately, and even though visual studio said it built successfully I did not see the Commons.lib file appear on the output directory.
I tried it even without the other projects, in a completely different solution. It still did not generate any .lib file in the output directory. I think this should be verifiable as well.
So what am I missing here, is there some kind of minimum requirement needed to have to get a .lib output file generated? Is my code too small to generate a .lib output? I am using Visual Studio 2022.
Add one empty .cpp file in your lib project and a lib will be generated.
But as far as I am concerned, it will be better to #include the logger_mutex.h to other project's pch.h instead of as a library.
I'm using C++ and visual studio 2015. I've created 2 projects in 1 solution. The first project is a static library and the other a DLL. I want to include one header file from the static library to use it in the DLL. I tried specifying the path to the header file with - Project->Properties->C/C++ -> General -> Additional include directories but it doesn't work. When I try to include the header file I get a red underline saying "cannot open source file "SomeHeaderFile.h".
Thanks for the help.
Thanks for the tips but I found out how to make it work. The DLL is in a extra folder. All I had to do was #include "../../TheHeaderFileThatISpentHoursTryingToGet.h". I deleted the reference in the additional include directories path and it still works. I always thought that it made sense for files from different projects in the same solution to be accessible throughout all the projects. Thanks again.
I'm using a library for image processing called Cimg. The library is stored in a single .h file (cimg.h).
I need to create several Visual Studio solutions(one solution for each exercise).
Where can I put this file globally so that I don't have to copy it to the Visual Studio solution each time?
You can put your header file anywhere you want, then add that folder as additional include directory for your visual studio project: Right click your project in the solution explorer, then:
Configuration properties->C/C++->General->Additional Include Directories
Just add the path there, and you can simply include CImg.h by:
#include <CImg.h>
In Visual Studio 2012 (C++ environment), for a Win32 console application, I need to include a new header file to my project. I tried copying the files in the project's location but that is of no help. The file is iGraphics.h and it is shown in the header files list but does not compile. What should be the correct approach?
You should add the path to that header to the additional include directories under C/C++ in your project settings. Afterwards, just #include "iGraphics.h" where you need it.
Don't just move header files around, and don't add existing headers to your project for no good reason. This way, you can easily change versions by just specifying a different folder.
The easiest way to do this is:
Right click on the header file (to be included) in the Solution explorer.
General->"Excluded from the build"
Select "No" from the drop down list
Click "OK".
In VS2012, just using '"' instead of '<>' around the header file in include also works.
Put the file in the right place in the file system (like you did). Then right-click your project in the solution explorer and use Add > Existing Item to add it to your project.
If you don't want to move your file (which you probably should not), see Luchian's answer on how to add the include directory to the include folders.
I created an empty 'Demo' project in Visual Studio 2008 and added some existing projects to my solution. Included "MyHeader.h" (other project's header) in main.cpp file which is in 'Demo'. Also added header files' path in "Tools/Option/VC++ Directories/Include files" section. But intellisense says: "File MyHeader.h not found in current source file's directory or in build system paths..."
How the problem can be fixed?
Delete the .sdf file that is in your solution directory. It's just the Intellisense database, and Visual Studio will recreate it the next time you open that solution. This db can get corrupted and cause the IDE to not be able to find things, and since the compiler generates this information for itself on the fly, it wouldn't be affected.
If you choose Project and then All Files in the menu, all files should be displayed in the Solution Explorer that are physically in your project map, but not (yet) included in your project. If you right click on the file you want to add in the Solution Explorer, you can include it.
This happened to me just now, after shutting down and restarting the computer. Eventually I realised that the architecture had somehow been changed to ARM from x64.
In Visual Studio 2019 in my case I copied a header file into the project directory, just near the other files. Intellisense could see it, but the build failed. Fair enough, it wasn't actually added to the project. I added it as existing item but this is the point that Visual Studio still didn't account for it.
Solution:
Close the project.
Delete the .vs directory.
Reopen the project.
Now Visual Studio recreates the directory with everything in it and it can now see the included file.
If it is the case that only the IDE indicates that it cannot find included files, but compiling is successful, the issue is simply that IntelliSense is not fully up to date with recent changes. This can happen specifically when including existing projects, in my own experience.
Deleting the .sdf file (= IntelliSense database) that is generated in your solution directory forces Visual Studio to regenerate it, so that it is up to date again. Just doing a "clean" will probably do the same thing, but takes more time since everything will be generated again then.
I know this is an older question, but none of the above answers worked for me. In my case, the issue turned out to be that I had absolute include paths but without drive letters. Compilation was fine, but Visual Studio couldn't find an include file when I right-clicked and tried to open it. Adding the drive letters to my include paths corrected the problem.
I would never recommend hard-coding drive letters in any aspect of your project files; either use relative paths, macros, environment variables, or some mix of the tree for any permanent situation. However, in this case, I'm working in some temporary projects where absolute paths were necessary in the short term. Not being able to right-click to open the files was extremely frustrating, and hopefully this will help others.
Had the same problem. Double check if you added the include files to Debug or Release Version of your project. If you only added it for one of them and compile for the other VS will just play dumb and not find them.
Try adding the header file to your project's files. (right click on project -> add existing file).
In my experience, with VS2010, when include files can't be found at compile time, doing a clean, then build usually fixes the problem. It's not that rare for the editor to be able to open an include file and then the compiler to announce that it can't find that very file, even when it is open on the screen!
If the visual studio says that you miss some file in the current source file folder, there is one solution that i used. Just right click the file you want to add and choose Open Document, if it really doesn't exist, then you should see something like cannot find file in the source file path = "somewhere in your computer", then what you could do is the add your source file into that path first and see if it works.
I had this issue after upgrading to Visual Studio 2019 from 2015. It would compile the project fine but Intellisense and the IDE couldn't find any header files.
The project only had valid configuration for Win32/Debug. Include paths were not setup correctly for other environments. Even though Visual Studio displayed the current environment as Win32/Debug, Intellisense must have been using something else.
Changing the current environment to x64/Release, and then back to Win32/Debug fixed it.
In Visual Studio, click on Project > Rescan Solution as shown below to rebuild the project database.
Here's how I solved this problem.
Go to Project --> Show All Files.
Right click all the files in Solutions Explorer and Click on Include in Project in all the files you want to include.
Done :)
I encountered this issue, but the solutions provided didn't directly help me, so I'm sharing how I got myself into a similar situation and temporarily resolved it.
I created a new project within an existing solution and copy & pasted the Header and CPP file from another project within that solution that I needed to include in my new project through the IDE. Intellisense displayed an error suggesting it could not resolve the reference to the header file and compiling the code failed with the same error too.
After reading the posts here, I checked the project folder with Windows File Explorer and only the main.cpp file was found. For some reason, my copy and paste of the header file and CPP file were just a reference? (I assume) and did not physically copy the file into the new project file.
I deleted the files from the Project view within Visual Studio and I used File Explorer to copy the files that I needed to the project folder/directory. I then referenced the other solutions posted here to "include files in project" by showing all files and this resolved the problem.
It boiled down to the files not being physically in the Project folder/directory even though they were shown correctly within the IDE.
Please Note I understand duplicating code is not best practice and my situation is purely a learning/hobby project. It's probably in my best interest and anyone else who ended up in a similar situation to use the IDE/project/Solution setup correctly when reusing code from other projects - I'm still learning and I'll figure this out one day!
If some soul has scrolled down to this bottom, what worked for me was disabling the Disable Database option i.e. set it to False under Tools|Options|Text Editor|C/C++|Advanced. For some reason, it was set to True for me.
As per docs, if it's set to True
All use of the code browsing database (SDF), all other
Browsing/Navigation options, and all IntelliSense features except for
#include Auto Complete are disabled.
None of the solutions worked for me. Here is what was the issue for me:
(Note discrepancy in build configuration and VC++ Directories (x86 vs x64)
To fix, just changed the build configuration to 'x86':