LNK1181 error when compiling V8 engine on Win10 - c++

Question

I'm following this guide on building V8 but I am hitting some issues on the compilation step. I am running Windows 10 x64. I am trying to compile with options to embed the engine also.
Running the following command:
ninja -C out.gn/x64.release
Gives me this error:
ninja: Entering directory `out.gn/x64.release'
[1/471] LINK mksnapshot.exe mksnapshot.exe.pdb
FAILED: mksnapshot.exe mksnapshot.exe.pdb
C:/Workspace/depot_tools/win_tools-2_7_6_bin/python/bin/python.exe ../../build/toolchain/win/tool_wrapper.py link-wrapper environment.x64 False link.exe /nologo /OUT:./mksnapshot.exe /PDB:./mksnapshot.exe.pdb #./mksnapshot.exe.rsp
LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'comdlg32.lib'
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
Now I believe I have narrowed down the error to looking for the .lib files in the wrong directory. I have (had) multiple versions installed, so there were multiple folders in my Windows Kit install.
Windows Kits/10/Lib/10.0.16299.0
Windows Kits/10/Lib/10.0.15xxx.0
If I dragged and dropped the comdlg32.lib file from 10.0.16299.0 into the 10.0.15xxx.0 directory then the error changed to a LNK1181 error with a different input file. I did this a few times but I was unsure if this was going to cause issues with different versions and there was probably going to be a lot.
I uninstalled the 10.0.15xxx.0 version which left behind the folder I mentioned, so I removed that and after doing so I have started getting the LNK1181 error with a different input file (advapi32.lib I assume the very first file it can't find). This is how I came to the conclusion about the path being incorrect.
So I have tried a few things to change the path (I hoped just uninstalling the old version would fix it) such as:
Uninstalling the old version.
Going through registry entries to see if I can find an install path or something using that path, which I didn't. I did notice that there was still installation and data in the registry for the 10.0.15xxx.0 install, I might try deleting that from the registry directly as a last resort?
I have tried to explicitly set the path by setting <TargetUniversalCRTVersion>10.0.16299.0</TargetUniversalCRTVersion> in this file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\Neutral\uCRT.props
I have never used Ninja before so I tried looking for a way to set some kind of lib-path in the command but couldn't really find anything.
I looked through the python scripts being executed to try and locate something to do with the libs path but couldn't see anything.
I would be grateful for any help and suggestions. Thanks.

Answer 1

You can try to compile v8 using Visual Studio as explained here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/windows_build_instructions.md#using-the-visual-studio-ide
By running the following commands:
$ gn gen --ide=vs out.gn/x64.release
$ cd out.gn/x64.release
$ msbuild all.sln
You can see a full example here: https://github.com/phpv8/v8js/issues/272#issuecomment-262848754
Apparently this method is not officially supported anymore, but I had the same problem as you have and this solved the issue for me.
Note that after this I had another issue, the unit tests failed to be compiled due to a linking error, but I had the necessary libraries to use v8. So there may be deeper problem that is causing all of this that I'm missing.
Edit:
Also, you could try to set the following parameters with gn args:
visual_studio_path = "..."
visual_studio_version = "2017"
wdk_path = "..."
windows_sdk_path = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10"
To set those parameters, do:
gn args out.gn/x64.release
This will open a text editor where you can write the extra parameters you are interested in.
To see the full list of parameters you can specify:
gn args --list out.gn/x64.release

Answer 2

I was following this guide https://medium.com/dailyjs/how-to-build-v8-on-windows-and-not-go-mad-6347c69aacd4 and also ran into the error
LINK1181: cannot open input file 'advapi32.lib'
I'm pretty sure it was because I had the wrong versions of the Windows 10 SDK. Similar to you I had versions:
Windows Kits/10/Lib/10.0.10240.0
Windows Kits/10/Lib/10.0.16299.0
But according to https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/windows_build_instructions.md#Setting-up-Windows (Which I think is relevant) you need version 10.0.15063.0
After installing version 10.0.15063.0 (with the visual studio installer) to
Windows Kits/10/Lib/10.0.15063.0
I was able to continue with the build.