Question
Is there an easy, straight forward way of including the ITK libraries into my project (VS2008 solution) without using CMake?
Background
I have just started looking into ITK this week. So far I successfully compiled ITK & VTK and got the WikiExamples to compile (and run) as well. My next goal is to include any ITK functionality into my own project. I have no experiences with CMake except the use of it during the documented installation process.
My own project codebase is in itself a rather complicated, SDK environment in rather large, complex VS2008 solution to which I only want to add a bit of ITK functionality. As I have built ITK already, can I simply set includes to the .h files and add the lib directories to the linker?
Is there a good way to do this, as the .h files are spread over the whole ITK code tree?
I've realized that this question is similar, but the given answer was too cryptic for me, sorry.
Edit: After a 2nd and 3rd read, it actually wasn't. It led to my answer below.
When configuring ITK with CMake (or cmake-gui) one can set the variable CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to a destination for all output. The default value is C:/Programm Files (x84)/itk
After Configure and Generate have been performed successfully, the solution file (ITK.sln) has been created in the given "Where to build the binaries" directory and can be opened in Visual Studi0 2008. The solution has the default project ALL_BUILD which builds the solution, but it also has a INSTALL project which is skipped by default.
Building this solution (after ALL_BUILD) copies all required lib, .h, .dll etc. files into the path specified before.
This folder structure is the place to link my own project up to.
Linking in your own project
In your own project of VS Studio (I'm on VS 2008) you have to modify your project properties to include the include files:
And you have to modify your project properties to include the library files for linking:
Related
I have been successfully testing an image processing library (https://github.com/libvips/libvips) in a C++ project in VS2017. I am new to C/C++ and I have been following the documentation here which describes the C way of using the library. There are features I would like to try in the C++ API, but the C++ API needs to be built with the same compiler as my project. According to the author:
It's slightly awkward to set up under Windows. The problem is that C++
does not have a ABI, so you must use exactly the same C++ compiler for
your whole project. This means the libvips C++ win binary (built with
g++) won't work with MSVC C++.
You need to copy the libvips C++ API source code into your own project
and build it with your own code. It's just a few files and pretty
simple to incorporate:
https://github.com/libvips/libvips/tree/master/cplusplus
I have made several attempts to build the minimal set of files but I have not had any success.
My steps so far:
Create a C++ console app in VS2017, set to Debug and x64
Extract the 'vips-dev-8.10' folder from vips-dev-w64-all-8.10.6.zip to where the project file is (this contains all the built .dll files, .lib files, .h files etc.)
Extract 'cplusplus' folder from 'libvips-master.zip' to where the project file is (this has all the project source files including the cplusplus folder which is the part I have to build per the above explanation)
Add the following folders to Project > Properties > C/C++->General > Additional Include Directories
C:\Projects\ConsoleApplicationVIPS3\ConsoleApplicationVIPS3\cplusplus\include\vips
C:\Projects\ConsoleApplicationVIPS3\ConsoleApplicationVIPS3\vips-dev-8.10\include
C:\Projects\ConsoleApplicationVIPS\ConsoleApplicationVIPS\vips-dev-8.10\lib\glib-2.0\include
C:\Projects\ConsoleApplicationVIPS\ConsoleApplicationVIPS\vips-dev-8.10\include\glib-2.0
Add the 5 .cpp files from the cplusplus folder into the project Source Files folder and Add them in the project tree.
Build the project.
As a result I get the following errors:
I haven't written any code yet. I thought I should just be able to point to the .h include files and compile the required C++ files. It's not clear to me what else I might need to add, but it definitely seems like I don't understand the correct procedure to build the project. I watched some videos on C++ compilation like this one but I cant see where I went wrong.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
EDITS 3-Jun-21
I have made some changes. I have instead extracted the exact version of the library according to the suggestion by #Frank, and I also discovered the usefulness of the compiler output window, thanks #Alan Birtles.
I am still getting errors, but I am not clear why. The first error is:
E0020 identifier "VImage" is undefined
Which is odd because I have added the folders to Project > Properties > C/C++->General > Additional Include Directories, and one of them is ..\cplusplus\include\vips which contains VImage8.h
And the Output window shows
Any further advice would be appreciated!
I am a Python developer and I have not used C++ since university. I am doing scientific programming with python, mainly. I wanted to try C++ to see if it is better performance-wise.
I am quite new in C++. I have found dlib library, which seemed a good library as it had many interesting features. But when I downloaded it, I found several folder full of .h and .cpp files.
In Python, I would have installed a wanted library using pip or something, then use it in my project using import.
Is there a similar installation for c++ libraries? Or do I have to look among all those .h and .cpp files and decide which ones I need in my project then copy them? Or how do I use the dlib library?
I have searched a lot on google but I could not find any indication on how to use a c++ library or install a new package to be used.
I use Visual Studio Community 2017 and Windows 10 if that matters.
To integrate a library, you need two kinds of things:
header files (usually *.h) with the declarations required to let the compiler know about the features in the library (a little similar to an import statement);
compiled library files (usually *.lib) containing the precompiled executable code itself, to let the linker assemble the final executable file.
In some cases (especially for templated code), a library can be made of header files only. In other cases, the package doesn't contain a ready-made library file and you have to build it yourself or manually include the source files (*.c/cpp) in your project.
Not speaking of the innumerable optional settings that you may have to adjust to comply with the specifics of the generated code, such as function calling convention, struct alignment...
Last but not least, some libraries are connected to at run-time only. They are called Dynamic Link Libraries and involve yet different procedures.
All of this is relatively complex and close to black magic for beginners. If you are very lucky, you will find some library documentation telling you which options to use for your compiler. If you can, start from an existing sample project that works!
For dlib, check http://dlib.net/compile.html.
Be ready for a cultural shock when you will compare to the ease of use of the Python modules.
It is quite a broad question, but I'll do my best.
First of all, in C++ libraries consist of header files and precompiled part (.lib,.dll on Windows, .a, .so on Linux). To use them in your project you have to inform your program (and compiler) about features that library has (by #including their header file) and linker to include that library binaries.
pip is package manager, which automatically downloads, builds and installs library that you want in your system. In C++ there is no such single tool at the moment and there steps must be done more or less manually.
For dowloading you usually end up with git or downloading the zip archive with source (do it here). Once you have sources you have to build it.
In order to achieve multiplatformity libraries usually does not get shipped with concrete build system description (Visual Studio Project on Windows or makefile on Linux etc.), but are created in more general tool CMake, which abstracts them. E.g. dlib does that. With use of CMake (For start I recommend CMake-GUI, which is installed with CMake on Windows) you can generate Visual Studio Project, which later you can open and compile to generate .lib file. How exactly to do it follow dlib compilation description.
Once you have you lib and headers files on your disk you can add headers and .lib to your Visual Project and use as any other C++ library. (Seems old, but should work)
As far as I know, there are no tools similar to pip for C++. What you have to do depends on your working environment and the respective library.
In case of dlib there are instructions on the project homepage for Visual Studio. Basically, it involves compiling the whole library alongside your own project by copying a single source file to it and setting up include pathes.
From http://dlib.net/compile.html:
Compiling on Windows Using Visual Studio 2015 or Newer
All you need to do is create an empty console project. Then add dlib/all/source.cpp to it and add the folder containing the dlib folder to the #include search path. Then you can compile any example program by adding it to your project.
Again, note that dlib will only be able to work with jpeg and png files if you link in libjpeg and libpng. In Visual Studio, the easiest way to do this is to add all the libjpeg, libpng, and zlib source files in the dlib/external folder into your project and also define the DLIB_PNG_SUPPORT and DLIB_JPEG_SUPPORT preprocessor directives. If you don't know how to configure Visual Studio then you should use CMake as shown above since it will take care of everything automatically.
You have to download them, put them in your project directory, and then include them almost the same way you would do in python. You need to include only the .h files.
Example for test.h:
#include "test.h"
Hope this helps!
I implemented the SFML library nightly build to my Visual Studio 2013, because the original one is not compatibile with this VS version. I done everything what is needed (added directory to include folder in both Debug and Release, added directory to .dll files), but it can't find the files in program. What else should be done to make this library work? Or should i consider changing Visual Studio to 2010?
You haven't given really to much information so I am just really guessing as to what the problem is.
added directory to .dll files
But that sounds like your problem right there. You don't add the directory that the .dll files are in to your project. The only directories you need to add to the project are the include directory and the library directory.
But anyways I am assuming you are using dynamic linking since otherwise you wouldn't be dealing with .dlls. Now different IDE's require that you place the .dlls in different spots but since you are dealing with VS2013 you need to copy whatever .dlls that you are using into the same folder where your program's compiled executable is (The .exe file).
Another option is to link statically instead of dynamically which I generally prefer to do on small projects but it is really up to the developer which he prefers.
When you link statically you don't need to include any .dlls. What you will need to do is recompile SFML's sources and make sure to build the library so it produces the static library files (They should be named something like sfml-graphics-s-d.lib for debug and sfml-graphics-s-d.lib for release).
Add that library directory which contains the static library files to your project and then link to them .lib files in VS's input window (Remember that -d is for the debug build).
Next you will need to add SFML_STATIC to your preprocessor options on both the release and debug build.
After that you are good to go and don't need to include the .dll files with your project. And again whether you choose to link dynamically or statically is really up to you and the project you are working on but for small projects I would suggest linking statically.
I'm fairly new to C++ and an trying to figure out to use the TagLib library for a project I am working on. I'm working with unmanaged C++ in Visual Studio 2010 on Windows 7 64bit. I've never used an external library before so I'm very confused on how to go about this.
From this blog entry I got the libtaglib.a and taglib.dll files. I ran across this SO question on how to use TagLib, but it deals with QT Creator, not Visual Studio and I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to understand what is being said to translate it into what needs done for Visual Studio.
So, some questions:
Is it even possible to do this with unmanaged code?
What exactly is the function of a .a file?
Most importantly, how do I go about using the taglib.dll in my program??
I've been all over Google looking for a way to do this, but my major problem is that everything I run across is over my head. Please let me know if more info is required. Any help is very much appreciated! Thanks!
I seem to have gotten it working successfully. Here's a rough outline of what I did:
1.) I used CMake to generate the Visual Studio solution.
2.) I attempted to build the tag project in the VS solution, but it failed.
3.) I made the corrections to a few source files as outlined here: http://old.nabble.com/taglib-fails-to-compile-with-MS-VC%2B%2B-2010-td29185593.html
4.) I built the tag project again in release mode. This time it was successful.
5.) I copied the resulting dll, def, and lib files to the same directory as the source files for my project.
6.) I copied the header files from the taglib source to a subdirectory in my project (not sure if this entirely good practice)
7.) In my project settings, I set the subdirectory with the header files as an additional include directory.
8.) I added the dll, exp, and lib files to my project by just going to Add>Existing Item.
9.) I added some code from the taglib examples and built it. Everything worked so I think I got it.
One caveat I ran into, since the DLL was built in release mode, my project had to be run in release mode or it would crash. I'm guessing that if I replaced the DLL with one built in debug mode I could run my program in debug mode, but I have not tried this.
You cannot use libraries specific to GCC (you can tell because they have .a extensions) with Visual Studio. You will have to build the library from source in order to use it with MSVC. Once you have done that it's a simple matter of adding the .lib generated from the build process to your project and things should work out of the box. (Note that it's a .lib you need whether you're compiling for dynamic linking or not -- doesn't matter in msvc land)
EDIT -- after looking at TagLib itself --
In order to compile TagLib you'll need to get the CMake build system, and TagLib itself, and have CMake build you a visual studio solution. Using that solution you'll be able to build the .libs and .dlls you need. Note that because TagLib is a KDE library, you'll probably need to also build some QT bits in order for everything work work successfully. However, I don't have specific experience with the library so I'm not going to be all that helpful here.
Yo do not have to recompile the source (to create the .lib file) if you have the .dll file. With dumpbin /exports and lib (both came with Visual Studio) yo can create a lib that you can link with your application. In this link you can see a nice explanation: http://www.coderetard.com/2009/01/21/generate-a-lib-from-a-dll-with-visual-studio/
But as Billy Said, probably you would need other parts of QT to use this library.
I have been trying to set up OpenCV for the past few days with no results. I am using Windows 7 and VS C++ 2008 express edition. I have downloaded and installed OpenCV 2.1 and some of the examples work. I downloaded CMake and ran it to generate the VS project files and built all of them but there with several errors, and couldn't get any farther than that.
When I ran CMake I configured it to use the VS 9 compiler, and then it brought up a list of items in red such as BUILD_EXAMPLES, BUILD_LATEX_DOCS, ect. All of them were unchecked except BUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT, BUILD_TESTS, ENABLE_OPENMP, and OPENCV_BUILD_3RDPARTY_LIBS. I configured and generate without changing anything and then it generated the VS files such as ALL_BUILD.vcproj. I built the OpenCV VS solution in debug mode and it had 15 failures (maybe this is part of the problem or is it because I don't have python and stuff like that?)
Now there was a lib folder created after building but inside there was just this VC++ Minimum Rebuild Dependency file and Program Debug Database file, both called cvhaartraining. I believe it should have created the .lib files I need instead of this. Also, the bin folder now has a folder called Debug with the same types of files with names like cv200d and cvaux200d.
Believe I need those .lib files to move forward.
I would also greatly appreciate if someone could direct me to a reliable tutorial to set up VS for OpenCV because I have been reading a lot of tutorials and they all say different things such as some say to configure Window's environment variables and other say files are located in folders such as OpenCV/cv which I don't have. I have gotten past the point of clear headed thinking so if anyone could offer some direction or a simple list of the files I need to link then I would be thankful.
Also a side question: why when linking the OpenCV libs do you have to put them in quotes?
If you're just getting started, you should probably grab the prebuilt libraries for OpenCV instead. It's OpenCV-2.1.0-win32-vs2008.exe from this page.
Once you have that, there is really no setup. Just link to the (already built) lib files in any VS project you create, and make sure the OpenCV include directory is in the projects include path.