LNK2019: Unresolved external symbol __imp__ in the .obj file in Line 1 - c++

Question

I'm not sure what's going wrong. I'll describe the problem, followed by my understanding of what's going on. It's a simple code:
#include <iostream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "stdafx.h"
#include <iViewNG-Core.h>
int main(int argc, char ** args) {
iViewVersion version;
iViewRC rc = iView_GetLibraryVersion(&version);
if (RC_NO_ERROR != rc)
printf("ERROR returned by iView_GetLibraryVersion(): %d\n", rc);
printf("The version of the libiViewNG is: %u.%u.%u.%u\n", version.major, version.minor, version.patch, version.build);
return 0;
}
The error description:
Error LNK2019 unresolved external symbol
__imp__iView_GetLibraryVersion#4 referenced in function _main SMI_TrialTests c:\Users\Rakshit\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\SMI_TrialTests\SMI_TrialTests\SMI_TrialTests.obj
I confirmed that the code is indeed reading iViewNG-Core.h because the auto-fill lets me use functions declared in the file. I did this by adding the lib and include directory correctly in the appropriate VC++ directories. Since this a linker issue, where am I going wrong?
I am new to C++ and I know there are tons of duplicated LNK2019 questions but none of them seemed to solve my problem.
Linker output:
/OUT:"c:\users\rakshit\documents\visual studio
2015\Projects\SMI_TrialTests\Debug\SMI_TrialTests.exe" /MANIFEST
/NXCOMPAT /PDB:"c:\users\rakshit\documents\visual studio
2015\Projects\SMI_TrialTests\Debug\SMI_TrialTests.pdb" /DYNAMICBASE
"kernel32.lib" "user32.lib" "gdi32.lib" "winspool.lib" "comdlg32.lib"
"advapi32.lib" "shell32.lib" "ole32.lib" "oleaut32.lib" "uuid.lib"
"odbc32.lib" "odbccp32.lib" /DEBUG /MACHINE:X86 /INCREMENTAL
/PGD:"c:\users\rakshit\documents\visual studio
2015\Projects\SMI_TrialTests\Debug\SMI_TrialTests.pgd"
/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE /MANIFESTUAC:"level='asInvoker' uiAccess='false'"
/ManifestFile:"Debug\SMI_TrialTests.exe.intermediate.manifest"
/ERRORREPORT:PROMPT /NOLOGO /VERBOSE /LIBPATH:"C:\iView NG
SDK\lib\lib-Windows7-32" /TLBID:1

Answer 1

Examining the symbol __imp__iView_GetLibraryVersion#4, it can be broken into two chunkcs:
__imp_: This means __declspec(dllimport).
_iView_GetLibraryVersion#4: This is the actual symbol, mangled as a C (or extern "C") __stdcall symbol, where the parameters total 4 bytes in size.
Considering this, and going by your code, the function causing the issue is likely:
extern "C" __declspec(dllimport) iViewRC __stdcall iView_GetLibraryVersion(iViewVersion*);
I would suggest checking that the LIB file for the DLL containing this function is being passed to either cl or link (in the former case, cl will pass it to link for you).