I'm trying to use TinyXml++ in my project, and I have tested it successfully in a small program before. I recently decided to use it to read a configuration file in my current project and though the code compiled, I got a ton of linker errors (unresolved external symbols mostly). I read in some forum thread, describing a similar problem, that I had to use the same runtime library as TinyXml++ was compiled with. I opened the accompanying Visual C++ 2008 project and saw it was using Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd).
I have now tested all runtime libraries with and without #define TINYXML_USE_TICPP before I include "ticpp.h". I've gotten from 9 to 80 linker errors (which I why I initially didn't want to post them all, but I will if you want to see them).
I have copied the static library ticppd.lib (found in the download folder) to my project's directory and linked it under Linker->Input->Addtional Dependencies. I have included a directory path to the TinyXml++ source under C/C++->General->Addtional Include Directories. What am I doing wrong? :(
TinyXML is a library with the full source code available; you should not need to include a .lib. You could separate TinyXML into a separate project and mark your project as depending on it, which will allow you to compile both projects with consistent settings for threading and debugging, but the easiest way to get it working should be to just add the TinyXML .cpp and .h files (just not the test one) to your project and compile.
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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 have been programming a game in c++ using the sfml library. However, I would like to adjust some of the code of that library, and use that altered code in my project.
So instead of linking the dll I would like to add the source code and then play with that source code. (e.g. for speed optimization).
I know that doing something like that is generally speaking a bad idea. Howeover, I want to learn by playing around a bit and trying different things.
So how would I add the sfml source code to my c++ project in MS visual studio. Note that I am a total noob. I already tried adding the sfml folder that I downloaded from git in the project properties page called "Additional Include Directories", but i am getting errors, of the form "Cannot open include file: 'SFML/Graphics/GLCheck.hpp': No such file or directory" so I guess that i have not yet done enough.
If you want to modify the source code in the library, all you'd have to do is just navigate to where you have SFML installed and go into the code files with a text editor and edit them.
Then, you could link the library to your VS project the same way you would normally but that library is now modified by you.
Seeing as you have a search directory issue already in VS, you must fix that first. Fix that and then go and modify the library's .hpp, .h, .cpp, whatever files in-place.
To fix the search issue.... I don't use VS for graphics, I use CodeBlocks so I am not sure about their GUI to link libraries and change search directories... but, find out where you installed SFML. Check your /usr/include/, it's probably there. Specify that path in the search directories. Just go and find where that GLCheck.hpp file is located. For Example: Say it's full path is /usr/include/SFML/Graphics/GLCheck.hpp... then /usr/include/SFML/Graphics/ or just /usr/include/ (VS might handle it recursively) needs to be in the list of SEARCH DIRECTORIES.
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!
Using netbeans 7.2 and the most recent version of MinGW (using installer) I can't use the libnoise library. I am properly including the header files, the auto completion confirms this, however the library is simply not working. There is a .lib file and a .dll. I have tried every possible combination of adding them under project > properties > Build > Linker as well as putting the .dll in the base project directory. Despite all this I am still getting undefined reference errors whenever I try and run the code. Does anyone know what to do?
I know that it is possible to link import library files (*.lib) with MinGW, but I still suggest to recompile libnoise.
With the current Makefile, this is not very easy and may break. Thus I've written a CMake script, which doesn't only work on Windows, but should work on all CMake supported platforms. In addition to this, I've cleaned up the directory structure. The code itself hasn't been touched and when you build a library it should essentially be the same as the current one.
libnoise on GitHub
After you've built your shared library, you'll have a libnoise.dll.a and libnoise.dll file. You then add libnoise.dll.a to the linking settings and put the DLL itself next to the binary, or in the working directory.
You have to link the lib file (= adding it to linker libraries) and put the dll to
<project root>/dist/<...>/
(where your exe is put to). There's no need to add the dll to linker too.
Can you please post the error message you get?
We have a large project using VS2008 and boost 1_42. I'm trying to upgrade to VS2010 and boost 1_44. I installed VS2010 and boost 1_44 and converted the project. Now I am trying to build, and everything compiles, but fails when linking:
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'libboost_thread-vc90-mt-1_42.lib'
I have changed the include and lib directories to point to the new boost 1_44 files and I have renamed the old boost 1_42 directory.
Why is the linker still looking for a vc90-1_42 file, when it is only using 1_44 headers? Is there a way that I can determine WHY the linker wants this file? The linker obviously thinks it needs the file, but why?
I have cleaned the project and I am re-building to ensure any old build files are erased.
I've run into exactly this problem a couple of times too. It's usually been some old temporary files but like in your case cleaning didn't always do the trick straight away. Does your project include any static libs that might have been built with 1.42?
Something you can try which may or may not be helpful in tracking down your issue:
Rename the old boost directory back to it's original name
Clean the solution
Under C/C++->Command Line->Additional Options add "/showIncludes"
Under Linker->Command Line->Additional Options add "/verbose:lib"
Rebuild all
Then when you build you'll be able to see at which point 1.42 headers are included, etc. in the output window. Somehow doing this helped me in tracking down where the problem was.
Along with changing the lib directory, you need to change the name of the boost library. That's in the Linker | Input section of the project settings.
Your added comment makes it clear that the dependency on the Boost 1.42 library was being created indirectly by another library that hadn't been rebuilt.
For this you basically have two choices: either add that library as a project to your main solution, and make sure it has enough dependency information that it'll be re-built when you upgrade Boost, or use the /Zl compiler switch when you build your library. This tells the compiler you're building a library so you do not want to embed library dependencies like this.
Boost uses
#pragma comment(lib)
command to inform the linker of libraries it needs to link with. It is not an error. If Boost says you need it, it's likely you do.
On How can I find out why the linker wants this file?
There are programs which will go through your app and dlls/libs and report the content of manifests and what the binaries report they depend on. You could then scan the report for the unexpected libraries being included. We used this mainly to find libs including the previous version of the VC runtime.
Have not used the one we had in about 5 years though, now if only I could remember the name of the app!
DependancyWalker (depends.exe) will allow you to see dependancies of dll/exe but not static libs.
You could open each binary as a 'file' in MSVS and look at the manifest content by hand, but I imaging this would be a bit painful. I've not tried this with a static lib.