This question already has answers here:
What is an undefined reference/unresolved external symbol error and how do I fix it?
(39 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
This is probably me being stupid but what am I doing wrong here? I'm not sure if I need the code but I'm doing this in Visual Studio 2019.
Are you sure you specified both assembly versions correctly in the linker? This means both for release and for debug.
Considering that you are using VisualStudio2019, I strongly advise you to use vcpkg - this is a package management made by Microsoft that simplifies the installation of libraries and other features in 1 line =)
Using it, you do not even need to enter the linker, and the official vcpkg website will help you configure it correctly.
Did you make sure that your project is linked with SDL2.lib and SDL2main.lib?
This question already has answers here:
What is an undefined reference/unresolved external symbol error and how do I fix it?
(39 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
Been working on this project in Visual Studio 2017 for a couple weeks, and suddenly since my last build I started getting hundreds of LNK2001 errors. The supposed unresolved symbols seem to be standard CRT and C++ stuff, for example memmove, _imp_CrtDbgReport, strlen, etc. I was doing some stuff in the config of my project so I'm betting I hovered over an option and accidentally scrolled or something, but I can't seem to see any obvious issue.
The project is still being generated with the MDd CRT, I'm not ignoring default libs. I have, however, started using a new 3rd party library, but again the supposed LNK2001 errors are for things like strlen and memcpy.
To be clear, the issue I'm facing is that the standard C and C++ library functions like strlen, memmove, etc. that I have been using the entire time (not explicitly) are suddenly showing up as unresolved external symbols.
I found the issue. I was passing in a command line argument to set the entry point to be wWinMain rather than just setting the subsystem type of the application to Windows.
I am implementing a SLAM-algorithm in Visual Studio 2019 where I want to use the ICP algorithm from the MRPT library for scan-matching.
I installed the MRPT library as 32-bit from source code using CMake. Problem is the error I'm receiving when building the solution (shown below). I assume it is because I have not added Additional Library Directories or Additional Dependencies for the Linker, because I can't find the .lib/.dll files anywhere. I tried installing the 64-bit precompiled binaries for Windows, where I found the .lib-files inside a lib-folder which does not appear when compiling manually with the source code - but can't use the same lib's because I need 32-bit (I tried linking to them, but the same error occurred in addition a bunch of warnings that library is 64-bit and target is 32-bit).
The code is pretty much exactly the same as the first example here, with (I believe) all necessary headers included.
The error produced (I also receive many more of the same error for every class I attempt to use from the library):
particle.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "__declspec(dllimport) public: __thiscall mrpt::poses::CPose2D::CPose2D(double,double,double)" (__imp_??0CPose2D#poses#mrpt##QAE#NNN#Z) referenced in function (function)
The quick question is: Shouldn't the .lib/.dll files be produced when compiling from source code as well? Or is there something embedded in the library so I don't need them, in which case there must be something else wrong?
The more complicated question is: If the missing .dll/.lib-files is not the problem, what could it be?
Sorry if I am missing any relevant information, this is my first post. Just let me know and I will provide.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
This question already has answers here:
What is an undefined reference/unresolved external symbol error and how do I fix it?
(39 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I would like to be able to display remote client in a simple OpenGL application. "Simple" means only display the client such as a texture.
I started to look the VNC protocol but due to their popularity I only have few documentation related to VNCViewer. About RFB the only documentation is: http://www.realvnc.com/docs/rfbproto.pdf which is cool to understand the protocol but not enough to use it in a C++ OpenGL application. Then I found: http://libvnc.github.io/
I tried to compile the example (downloaded from github). So I added into my qtproject all rfb headers files run cmake on some of them. Then I built it but got the error:
undefined reference to `rfbMakeXCursor' and many others related to rfbXxxxx
rfb.h contains declarations to those "undefined" errors.
I don't understand what did I do wrong. Has anybody already made it work?
I'm working on Windows 8.1 64bit using C++ qtCreator and MinGW.
Headers are just ""able of contents" for the compiler to know, which functions can be called. You need to actually link to the library. The odds are, that since you've got it from GitHub you must first build the library. The built library you then add to some "extras/lib" directory in your project, configure that directory as additional library directory and add the library to the linker flags.
Problem:
I'm trying to use a library named DCMTK which used some other external libraries ( zlib, libtiff, libpng, libxml2, libiconv ). I've downloaded these external libraries (*.LIB & *.h files ) from the same website. Now, when I compile the DCMTK library I'm getting link errors (793 errors) like this:
Error 2 error LNK2005: __encode_pointer already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 3 error LNK2005: __decode_pointer already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 4 error LNK2005: __CrtSetCheckCount already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 5 error LNK2005: __invoke_watson already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 6 error LNK2005: __errno already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 7 error LNK2005: __configthreadlocale already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Error 8 error LNK2005: _exit already defined in MSVCRTD.lib(MSVCR90D.dll) LIBCMTD.lib dcmmkdir
Documentation:
This seems to be a popular error for this library so, they do have a FAQ entry addressing this issue which ( http://forum.dcmtk.org/viewtopic.php?t=35 ) says:
The problem is that the linker tries to combine different,
incompatible versions of the Visual
C++ runtime library into a single
binary.
This happens when not all parts of your project and the libraries you
link against are generated with the
same code generation options in Visual
C++.
Do not use the /NODEFAULTLIB workaround, because strange software
crashes may follow. Fix the problem!
DCMTK is by default compiled with the "Multithreaded" or "Multithreaded
Debug" code generation option (the
latter for Debug mode).
Either change the project settings of all of your code to use these code
generation options,
or change the code generation for all DCMTK modules and re-compile.
MFC users beware: DCMTK should be compiled with "Multithreaded DLL" or
"Multithreaded DLL Debug" settings if
you want to link the libraries into an
MFC application.
Solution to same problem for others:
Huge Amount of Linker Issues with Release Build Only says:
It seems that your release build is
trying to link to something that was
built debug. You probably have a
broken dependency in your build, (or
you missed rebuilding something to
release by hand if your project is
normally built in pieces).
More technically, you seem to be
linking projects built with different
C Run Time library settings, one
with "Multi-Threaded", another one
with "Multi-Threaded Debug". Adjust
the settings for all the projects to
use the very same flavour of the
library and the issue should go away
Questions:
Till now I used to think that Name mangling is the only problem that may cause linking failures if its not been standardized. Just now I knew there are other things also which can cause same effect.
Whats up with the "Debug Mode" (Multi-Threaded Debug) and "Release Mode" (Multi-Threaded)? What exactly is happening under the hood? Why exactly this thing is causing linking error?
I wonder if there is something called "Single-Threaded Debug" and "Single-Threaded" which again causes the same thing.
Documentation talks something about "Code Generation Options". What Code Generation Options? WTH are they?
Documentation specifically warns us not to use /NODEFAULTLIB workaround. (example /NODEFAULTLIB :msvcrt ). Why? How would I cause troubles? what exactly is it?
Please explain the last point in the documentation for MFC users. Because I'm going to use MFC later in this project. Explain Why should we do it? What troubles would it cause if I don't.
Anything more you'd like to mention? I mean regarding similar errors. I'm very interested in Linker & its problems. So, if there are any similar things you can mentions them or some keywords atleast.
Whats up with the "Debug Mode"
(Multi-Threaded Debug) and "Release
Mode" (Multi-Threaded)? What exactly
is happening under the hood? Why
exactly this thing is causing linking
error?
The linker drags in libraries for several different reasons. The simplest is that a library is listed on the linker command line, or in the linker answer file on the linker command line. But any object files, whether compiled in your project or packed into a library, can also contain linker options including requesting particular libraries be linked in. In fact, the Visual C++ compiler automatically embeds such linker options matching the project options you use when compiling.
At link time, all the linker options from all object files and objects in static library files get combined. If more than one CRT library filename is requested, the linker reads in all of them and them you get naming conflicts, where the linker doesn't know which one to use.
I wonder if there is something called
"Single-Threaded Debug" and
"Single-Threaded" which again causes
the same thing.
There used to be, but the last few versions of Visual C++ have only shipped multi-thread compatible libraries.
Documentation talks something about
"Code Generation Options". What Code
Generation Options? WTH are they?
Look inside your project options.
Documentation specifically warns us
not to use /NODEFAULTLIB workaround.
(example /NODEFAULTLIB :msvcrt ). Why?
How would I cause troubles? what
exactly is it?
If you use /NODEFAULTLIB, all the linker settings stored within object files and objects in libraries get ignored. You'll end up with no runtime library and maybe missing other libraries. You can add them back in by hand, but it's still a big mess.
Please explain the last point in the
documentation for MFC users. Because
I'm going to use MFC later in this
project. Explain Why should we do it?
What troubles would it cause if I
don't. Anything more you'd like to
mention? I mean regarding similar
errors. I'm very interested in Linker
& its problems. So, if there are any
similar things you can mentions them
or some keywords atleast.
MFC applications and the MFC library have to use the same memory management functions, so that memory allocated by MFC can be freed by the application and vice-versa. FILE handles and other resources are also shared. The MFC DLLs are already compiled to use the CRT in a DLL, and in order to be able to share resources you need to use the same CRT, which means using a DLL too.
You need to configure project properties so that your debug build links with DCMTK's debug build and your release build links with DCMTK's release build.
The above is what you need to do. Below are explanations of some other random things you asked about.
Older versions of Visual Studio used to have single threaded libraries (release and debug versions) besides multithreaded libraries (release and debug versions). For your project you can pretend single threaded libraries never existed.
If you experiment with random ways to trick the linker into shutting up and leaving problems to be found by your customers instead of by yourself, you might find that the /NODEFAULTLIB option will do that. The makers of the DCMTK library are warning you not to do that because some other people did the same dumb thing in the past.
Whats up with the "Debug Mode" (Multi-Threaded Debug) and "Release Mode" (Multi-Threaded)? What exactly is happening under the hood? Why exactly this thing is causing linking error?
They are different versions of the C runtime library. You can statically link to the runtime library in debug and release mode. In the Code Generation Options (mentioned below), those would be "Multi-Threaded Debug" and "Multi-Threaded". The options "Multi-Threaded Debug DLL" and "Multi-Threaded DLL" dynamically link to the C runtime. By dynamically linking to the runtime, you'll also have to ship your installer configured to install the VC redistributable package that contains the proper runtime dlls for your version of Visual C++.
Statically linking to the C runtime is generally frowned upon, even by Microsoft:
In addition to all the methods
described above of distributing the
Visual C++ libraries DLLs, there is
one last option for building your
application which does not require you
to distribute the DLLs. However, this
option only works for native-only code
(it is not supported with /clr) and
leaves your customers seriously
vulnerable to any security holes as
well as adds a significant burden upon
yourself to patch all customer systems
should a vulnerability be found in any
of the libraries. This option is to
statically link in the libraries as
.lib files instead of dynamically
loading them as DLLs. You do this by
using the /MT flag on the cl.exe
command line (vs /MD), or selecting
the appropriate option in your project
properties through Visual Studio. You
may wish to use this option when
testing early debug builds of your
application on test machines before
you start working on setup. [See
footnote 3]
However, I can think of no scenarios
in which this is actually the right
thing to do when shipping your product
to customers. Basically, what this
approach does is pulls in the binary
code needed from .LIB files at compile
time, making it a part of your .exe or
.dll files. It increases the size of
your application, and there is no way
to update the libraries apart from
recompiling your application with new
.LIBs and redistributing your
application all over again. What this
means is that unless you go touch
every single machine which has
installed your application every time
there is a security vulnerability
found in the Visual C++ libraries and
completely reinstall your updated
binaries, you will be leaving your
customers vulnerable to attack. If
instead you use the DLLs, every time
there is a security vulnerability
found in the Visual C++ libraries,
Microsoft will install the update
centrally into the WinSxS folder via
Windows Update and all requests for
the DLLs will be redirected to the
updated version. This removes all
servicing burden on your side and also
allows the user to install one small
update which will touch all their
applications instead of replacing
every installed exe and DLL on their
system. Please, do not distribute an
application built by linking
statically against the Visual C++
libraries unless you have a system in
place for updating every customer
machine and also have a very good
reason to do so. At this time, I can
think of no circumstance under which
this would be the right thing to do
for a shipping application.
I wonder if there is something called
"Single-Threaded Debug" and
"Single-Threaded" which again causes
the same thing.
No such thing, see above.
Documentation talks something about "Code Generation Options". What Code Generation Options? WTH are they?
Right click on your Visual C++ project (from within Visual Studio) and select Properties. Under Configuration Properties->C/C++->Code Generation
Documentation specifically warns us not to use /NODEFAULTLIB workaround. (example /NODEFAULTLIB :msvcrt ). Why? How would I cause troubles? what exactly is it?
Take their advice and don't do it.
Please explain the last point in the documentation for MFC users. Because I'm going to use MFC later in this project. Explain Why should we do it? What troubles would it cause if I don't.
Because MFC is dynamically linked to the C runtime, using libraries that are statically linked to the C runtime will cause the linker errors you listed first in your post.
Anything more you'd like to mention? I mean regarding similar errors. I'm very interested in Linker & its problems. So, if there are any similar things you can mentions them or some keywords atleast.
From my experience, always dynamically link to the C runtime. It generally saves you a lot of headaches like the one you're experiencing right now.