Referencing static library in VC++ - c++

I am trying to statically link this library into my VS C++ project.First I compiled the source as a static lib.Linked it via VS Project properties.The .exe project works fine.Then I read this MS manual on how to compile the static lib into the executable and following the steps outlined there now if I am running the executable I am getting these errors:
Error 3 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp__glBlendFunc#8
referenced in function _text_buffer_render E:\Documents\visual studio
2012\Projects\XXXXEngine\FreeTypeTest\text-buffer.obj
Error 4 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp__glBindTexture#8
referenced in function _text_buffer_render E:\Documents\visual studio
2012\Projects\XXXXEngine\FreeTypeTest\text-buffer.obj
To me it seems like GLEW.lib errors.Does it mean I have to link also glew.lib statically as the freetype GL depends on it ?
Also, can I just use the lib with the executable without adding it to references, or it won't work in release build?I am asking it as I am quite confused with how the static linking should be done.I mean,now the executable works without adding the library to the project reference.Then why can't it be used just like this?

To me it seems like GLEW.lib errors
They are not, glBindTexture() is an OpenGL function. The MSDN library page is here. Scroll to the bottom, it shows you the .h file that declares it (you already that right since the compiler didn't complain) and the .lib you need to link.
Right-click your project, Properties, Linker, Input, Additional Dependencies setting. Add opengl32.lib. Or to use the upvoted answer's suggestion, you can inject the linker directive in your source code:
#include <gl\gl.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "opengl32.lib")

Have you tried to pragma mark your library?
Like so:
#pragma comment(lib, "any.lib");

Related

What do I need to include to avoid an Unresolved external symbol error trying to export a VST3?

I'm currently attempting to compile a VST3 plugin (or any C++ code, for that matter) for the first time, mainly just following Steinberg's own tutorial for all things except the actual sound processing.
Attempting to compile throws an "unresolved external symbol" error:
Error LNK2019 unresolved external symbol "public: __cdecl VSTGUI::VST3Editor::VST3Editor(class Steinberg::Vst::EditController *,char const *,char const *)" (??0VST3Editor#VSTGUI##QEAA#PEAVEditController#Vst#Steinberg##PEBD1#Z) referenced in function "public: virtual class Steinberg::IPlugView * __cdecl Itisdud::Split_TimesController::createView(char const *)" (?createView#Split_TimesController#Itisdud##UEAAPEAVIPlugView#Steinberg##PEBD#Z) Split_Times D:\programme\VST3Dev\Split_times\Split_Times\build\split_timescontroller.obj 1
The function that causes this, createView, is still the default it is when created by the Project Generator:
IPlugView* PLUGIN_API Split_TimesController::createView (FIDString name)
{
// Here the Host wants to open your editor (if you have one)
if (FIDStringsEqual (name, Vst::ViewType::kEditor))
{
// create your editor here and return a IPlugView ptr of it
auto* view = new VSTGUI::VST3Editor (this, "view", "split_timeseditor.uidesc");
return view;
}
return nullptr;
}
Copying the createView function from the again and adelay samples didn't work either.
As the Project generator only includes vstgui4/vstgui/plugin-bindings/vst3editor.h and not the vst3editor.cpp file, I tried including that as well (As I've read that not having the actual implementation there might be the cause of the issue), however that didn't fix the issue but made a lot of other errors happen upon compiling.
I also tried to follow this, including the cpp files noted there and changing the createView function to what is written there, however this also only led to there being a bit more than 300 errors upon compiling.
Copying the includes from the again sample didn't work either.
What would I need to include for this to work?
Those are the linker errors as you didn't instruct the linker where to find the required library files whose functions you are using.
Remember that compilation is a 2-step process that involves compilation and linking so it is best to separate them.
Lets assume you are using Visual Studio on Windows, and lets assume your VST SDK is installed on
C:\VST3SDK.
The first thing you should do is fire-up Visual Studio and select File->Open->CMake and go locate the CMake.txt file here
C:\VST3SDK\VST3_SDK.
After this file is loaded you will find on Visual Studio Solution Explorer a list of ready-made projects that come with the VST SDK loaded.
You will find that one of these projects is called Libraries and that is THE first action you have to do.
Now you have to build the correct library depending on whether you want to make 32-bits or 64-bits VSTs and you should set the configuration of the Libraries project accordingly.
You will build these libraries and if you hadn't changes any setting the libraries will be found at
C:\VST3SDK\VST3_SDK\out\build\x64-Debug\lib
or
C:\VST3SDK\VST3_SDK\out\build\x64-Release\lib
the necessary libraries being:
base.lib
pluginterfaces.lib
sdk.lib
sdk_common.lib
sdk_hosting.lib
vstgui.lib
vstgui_standalone.lib
vstgui.support.lib
vstgui_uidescription.lib
The above step ensures that you now have the necessary library files your VSTs will depend on.
Now assuming you have a VST sample project, lets say that you got from Git-hub and that it were written and setup correctly to run on Visual Studio, i.e. it came with a
myVST.vcxproj file.
Then you could paste the following pragmas on a prominent VST file such as the factory.cpp
#pragma comment(lib, "base.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "pluginterfaces.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "sdk.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "sdk_common.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "sdk_hosting.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "vstgui.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "vstgui_standalone.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "vstgui_support.lib")
#pragma comment(lib,
"vstgui_uidescription.lib")
(Had to abbreviate due to confusing formatting requirements of this site but replace like "vstgui.lib" with a fully qualified path like
"C:/VST3SDK/VST3_SDK/out/build/x64-Debug/lib/vstgui.lib"
Now if your project properties
C/C++ _> General _> Additional Include Directories has correct entries that will tell the compiler the paths it will find ALL the #include files, then you will find that if you right click on any compilable file (c, cpp, rc ...) and select Compile then the file should successfully compile into an object file without any Compiler errors otherwise it is an indication that the compiler cannot find the required header
files.
But the problem you face are the linker problems, the linker can not find the required libraries of functions you have used in your project and the solution is just pasting the pragmas above.

Unresolved external symbol error while using CImg library

I am trying to use CImg library for some image processing task. Using VS 2012 on Windows 7 x64, I am building a project to create dll that I need for my application. I have included the only header file CImg.h from the library. But as soon as I initialize an CImg object, I get bunch of unresolved external symbol errors. One sample error is as follows:
layer.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp_SetDIBitsToDevice referenced in function "public: struct cimg_library::CImgDisplay & __cdecl cimg_library::CImgDisplay::paint(void)" (?paint#CImgDisplay#cimg_library##QEAAAEAU12#XZ)
Can anyone explain to me what am I doing wrong and how to fix it? (I am a newbie when it comes to C++ terminologies.)
there is nothing other than the header file in the CImg library to link to.
You cannot link to a header file. If it is a header-only library, then you do not need to link anything. You include the header file and the functions it defines are compiled directly. That appears to be the case for CImg; the documentation says it is a self-contained template library that consists of only a single header file. So indeed, all you need to do is include it and you're off to the races.
The unresolved external symbol errors are coming from somewhere else. You have to read the error messages and look at the function names to see where.
A couple of hints:
The __imp_ prefix suggests that you're looking at a Windows API function.
If you didn't know that, you could always ignore the prefix and Google the readable part of the name, in this case, SetDIBitsToDevice. Chances are very good you'll turn up the documentation or at least something that points you in the right direction.
Indeed, in this case, you get right to Microsoft's SDK documentation for the SetDIBitsToDevice function. It's a Windows API function alright, and Microsoft's documentation always tells you what library you need to link to in order to consume it. Look at the bottom of the page:
Header: Wingdi.h (include Windows.h)
Library: Gdi32.lib
DLL: Gdi32.dll
The CImg library header file has obviously already included the Windows.h header file, or you'd have gotten a compile-time error. You're getting a linker error, which means that you have not told the linker to link in the Gdi32.lib library. This is what will allow you to call GDI functions. It is a stub that facilitates calling functions exported from Gdi32.dll.
In general, when building a Windows application, you will want to link with, at minimum, kernel32.lib, user32.lib, and gdi32.lib.
This question contains more information on dealing with undefined symbol errors, and also how to configure your linker. In Visual Studio, go to Project Properties → C/C++ → Linker → Input → Additional Dependencies. Or add #pragma comment(lib, "gdi32.lib") to a source file (your precompiled header is a good place, usually named StdAfx.h).
This function is part of the win32 API, specifically in GDI. You need to change your project settings to link with Gdi32.lib
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd162974(v=vs.85).aspx

Visual C++ linker can't resolve FFmpeg's external symbols

I'm making a C++ program and I want to use FFmpeg pre-built for x64, which is a C-compiled library.
I'm using this code in order to include its header:
extern "C" {
#include "libavcodec/avcodec.h"
#include "libavformat/avformat.h"
#pragma comment (lib,"G:/Documents/ffmpeg/lib/avcodec.lib")
#pragma comment (lib,"G:/Documents/ffmpeg/lib/avformat.lib")
}
I'm then calling the symbols like I would do for a normal function, for example with av_interleaved_write_frame(out->formatContext, &packet);
However, when I try to compile it with Visual Studio 2015's built-in C++ compiler, I get a lot of error like
Error LNK2019 unresolved external symbol _av_write_trailer referenced in function "void __cdecl closeArenaVideo(struct VideoOutput *)" (?closeArenaVideo##YAXPAUVideoOutput###Z) Sparta2 c:\Users\Théo\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\Sparta2\Sparta2\video.obj
for basically any of the symbols I'm refering to.
I tried to import everything in Visual Studio, to compile with command-line, to manually put FFmpeg's libraries in the default libraries path, without success.
Thank you in advance!
A typical problem which is hard to understand from quoted linker errors is the problem of referencing wrong .lib files, esp Win32 platform libraries in x64 build and vice versa. The names might be correct, but the set is wrong and then linker takes the #pragma references but ignores the content.
You should make sure that your build platform matches the bitness of referenced library files. This answer has minimalistic project which does build well and you can compare code/references to what you use, and it also mentions bitness problem as well in the very bottom and comments to the answer.

Getting FreeImage to work with Visual Studio 2010

I was advised by some of you not to long ago to use FreeImage as a library for image processing in C++.
I now have some trouble in getting the library to work (still relatively new here).
I've tried loading the various vcxproj and sln tiles and they gave me a blank project. Since there isn't any installation instructions provided for that, I gave up on making it a visual studio solution.
I next tried the old-fashion way of compiling the source code using the Makefile and then adding "FreeImage/Source" to the linker. While the IDE does not raise any red flags when I call functions declared in FreeImage.h, it gave me a bunch of "error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol" during compilation, as if the functions do not exist. What I suspect is that the IDE could not find the .cpp files that define the said functions, but I still get that same problem when I added FreeImage/Source/FreeImage to the linker.
Now when I directly included some of the .cpp files (i.e. Plugin.cpp and FreeImage.cpp) for a test, I get even more unresolved external symbol errors as well as things like "inconsistent dll linkage" for this within... for example FreeImage.cpp:
const char * DLL_CALLCONV
FreeImage_GetVersion() {
static char s_version[16];
sprintf(s_version, "%d.%d.%d", FREEIMAGE_MAJOR_VERSION, FREEIMAGE_MINOR_VERSION, FREEIMAGE_RELEASE_SERIAL);
return s_version;
}
So, I am totally stuck. What am I doing wrong? I felt I've followed the adequate steps in adding library dependencies, such as adding the specific folders that are immediate parents to the relevant .h and .cpp files in C/C++ -> General -> Additional Included Directories and Linker -> General -> Addition Library Directories.
Some help will be greatly appreciated!
Using FreeImage v3.15.3 I had no problems converting the VS2008 project to VS2010.
Also the building worked as expected. But when I linked to the static lib, I got some unresolved externals. First I tried al kinds of tricks setting /MT /MD linking, but that did not solve these linking problem.
After reading Some Newbie's comment I dug into freeimage.h. There I found a macro switch FREEIMAGE_LIB that controls the calling conventions of the function.
Use a #define FREEIMAGE_LIB before including the freeimage.h file. That way you can easily static link to FreeImage.lib

OpenGL/GLEW: Unresolved external _glewInit

I cannot get GLEW to link correctly with my program.
I have the path correct in my project (I've triple checked), I have tried building from scratch, using the x86 libs (all 4 - the -s, -mxs, etc) AND the x64 libs.
I have tried using the #pragma directive instead of configuring my project in properties.
I am trying to get it as a static lib so no DLLs will be necessary.
I also have GLEW_STATIC defined, as the build instructions advise.
Error message:
OGLInit.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _glewInit#0
referenced in function "bool __stdcall vexal::OGLStartup(void)"
(?OGLStartup#vexal##YG_NXZ)
I've even used dumpbin to check that initGlew is there. It is, and it is external.
I've also verified it's found the lib.
Searching
C:\Users\Jake\Documents\Vexal2\vexal\vc9_x86\lib\Debug\GLEW.lib:
I've run out of ideas here. Any help?
Yep. I rebuilt it using the glew_static project.
Just because you built that project doesn't mean you're linking to it.
C:\Users\Jake\Documents\Vexal2\vexal\vc9_x86\lib\Debug\GLEW.lib
That is not the static GLEW library. That is the import library for the DLL version of GLEW. The static GLEW library is called GLEW32s.lib. Link to that.
The problem was the calling convention. I changed the calling convention settings to __stdcall instead of __cdecl, changed _glfwTerminate_atexit( void ) to __cdecl in the GLFW code I had, and then built.
Fixed!