Visual Studio : create a DLL that uses another DLL - visual-studio

I am building a DLL using visual studio, which involves installing the following libraries :
GLM
GLFW
GLEW
I linked those libraries to visual studio using the following method :
specifying Additional Include Directories in the project property page
specifying Additional Dependencies in the project property page
specifying Additional Library Directories in the project property page
Of course GLM is a header only Library, which means that I am only required to specify the Additional Include Directories for GLM. And my dll built perfectly fine.
But the real problem occurs when using the library in a test project. I linked my test project to my library using the method mentioned above, but when I tried to build the test project, it produces the following results :
Cannot open include file <GLFW/glfw3.h>
And the same goes for glew. It seems that these libraries are not found when the library is being used by another test project. How can I fix this? Any help would be highly appreciated.

Set the Additional Include Directories correctly for all projects. The compiler doesn't magically inherit settings from a project which happens to have it's output linked into another project. So you have to provide it the correct include path for any source file it sees. To spare yourself from having hardcoded paths to include directories you could use a property sheet common for both projects. Or you could tackle the problem in code and make use of the PIMPL idiom (eventually as simple as e.g. forward declaring some GL types and using a unique_ptr to them in public classes) so the headers of your project never expose any of the external include files.

Related

Can I include an existing static library in my own static library project?

I am creating a static library project in visual studio for personal use, and I'd like to include another existing static library into my own static library.
Usually (for executible projects) I can set up extra include and lib directories in the project's properties, but this time the menues are different and I don't know which settings to use. How would I do that?
You can include a static library inside a static library, but it generally leads to bloat and other problems.
The best approach is usually to add the link library to your 'public header' using a #pragma so it's automatically linked:
#pragma comment(lib,"nameoflibIneed.lib")
I figured out a sort of hacky way to make it work.
I just included the library normally as I would in a normal project, and only after that I changed the project type to .lib.
Apparently the additional dependencies get saved after changing the type of the project even though the respective menus in the project configuration pages disappear.

adding reference to native visual c++ project

I have two visual c++ projects in my solution. First one (lets call it Main) is native code. The second one (Test), has Main added as reference. Test contains unit tests to methods in Main.
When I add Main as a reference to Test and try to compile it - I get errors that the library could not be found. Does adding a project as reference , does not add the output target path of Main to the library directories of Test ?
I don't know what VC is exactly doing under the hood, but adding reference to a project doesn't seem to have effect of linking libraries unlike C#.
You can use the code from another project by including and linking via the usual method of c++.

error LNK1104: cannot open file 'libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib'

I'm trying to link the shared library of boost thread into my application.
System: Windows8
IDE: Visual Studio 2010
I build the boost library using:
b2 --with-thread --build-type=complete link=shared
I can see the
boost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.dll
boost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib
and other file inside the stage/lib directory
I've added the path to Additional Library Directories and Input in linker option as:
Additional Library Directories: C:/boost_1_55_0_dyn/stage/lib
Input: C:\boost_1_55_0_dyn\stage\lib\boost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib
I don't know why on the earth Visual Studio is looking for libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib. I haven't mentioned the libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib anywhere in the properties or any place. I even search all my files and folders inside the project, libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib is not mentioned anywhere.
Well I forgot to put BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK in preprocessor definition. If the BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK is not defined, boost looks for static library, that is why its looking for libboost_thread-vc100-mt-gd-1_55.lib
This is additional information to the answer Pritesh already posted, but I'm new here so I can't comment.
It boils down to compatibility between your VS project settings and the way the boost libraries were built. It gets a little tricky because boost and VS do some autolinking for you. Check out the file …\Include\boost\config\Auto_link.hpp. It explains the algorithms and macros that will cause libraries that you didn't explicitly include to show up in your project.
For example, BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK is used to help determine if the boost library name should have "lib" pre-pended to the name during autolink.
Additionally ,
If you are using cmake and qibuild you can try this :
It automatically links with the corresponding libraries and make their headers available.
qi_use_lib(yourProgramName your libraries)
like this:
qi_use_lib(getimages ALCOMMON ALPROXIES ALVISION OPENCV2_CORE OPENCV2_HIGHGUI OPENCV2_IMGPROC)

Boost in VS2010 Express - redefinition and invalid calling convention errors

I am using VS2010 Express and just installed Boost v1_47. I have added the 'include' folder to 'additional include folders' option, and also the 'lib' folder to the 'additional libraries' option in VS.
Then, I included boost/regex.hpp in one of my files, but actually wrote no code using boost yet. However, when building the solution I get lots of error messages, coming in two flavours:
Redefiniton errors, such as:
1>D:\boost\boost_1_47\boost/detail/interlocked.hpp(83): error C2373: '_InterlockedCompareExchangePointer' : redefinition; different type modifiers
1> C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\include\winnt.h(2597) : see declaration of '_InterlockedCompareExchangePointer'
Invalid calling convention errors (lots of these), such as:
D:\boost\boost_1_47\boost/regex/v4/regex_traits_defaults.hpp(271): error C3641: 'boost::re_detail::global_lower' : invalid calling convention '__cdecl ' for function compiled with /clr:pure or /clr:safe
Note: I haven't explicitly included winnt.h in any of my source/header files, and have tried de-activating pre-compiled headers and removing the stdafx.h includes, but it didn't solve the problem.
What's going on?
Thanks in advance
You have to make sure that you compile your program with the same settings as boost.
It seems like you used the wrong project template (CLR something) to create your application project.
You could try to modify the properties of your existing project to make it compatible with boost, but the CLR ... projects have lots of incompatible property values set by default, so i think the easiest way would be to create a new project from scratch (and import your existing code).
You should use the "Empty Project" template and create a new project, and then add your existing source and header files to it, and add the boost include path again, and add any required boost .lib files to Project Properties > Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies (Most boost libraries work out of the box without adding anything to linker inputs because they are header only, so you might not need to add any .libs).
Boost is a C++ required, designed to be consumed by C++ code, not C++/CLI code, thus it can only be used with native C++ classes, and most boost headers will produce headers when included in a source file which contains C++/CLI code.

Cmake add_library with boost source files introduces references to non-existant files

we're building a cross-platform utility which must have a small footprint. We've been pulling header files from boost as and when we need them but now we must link against some boost C++ thread code. The easiest immediate solution was to create our own custom library using CMake's "add_library" command to create a static library composed of some boost thread source files. These compile without any problems.
The difficulty arises when I try to link to this library from an executable. Visual Studio 2008 returns an error saying that it cannot link to "libboost_thread-vc90-mt-sgd-1_40.lib". What really puzzles me is that I've grepped through all the source code and CMake config files and I can't find any reference to this libboost library, leading me to think that this has been autogenerated in some way.
This works OK in Linux, can anyone point out why I'm experiencing these issues in Windows?
#Gearoid
You found the correct reason for your problem, but not the correct solution. The BOOST_AUTO_LINK_NOMANGLE is an internal, i.e. for library authors, definition to control the auto-linking. The user level definition is BOOST_ALL_NO_LIB which when defined disables the auto-linking feature for all Boost Libraries code you use. This is described in the user.hpp configuration header (see user.hpp near the bottom and the Boost Config documentation). You can also control this on a per library level as describe in that header.
Ok, well, it turns out that Boost uses this auto-link feature for Visual Studio which embeds references to a mangled (ie, platform-compiler-mult-threaded, etc) boost library name.
The header file which controls this is called "auto_link.hpp" which lives in the config directory of the boost include tree. There's a special preprocessor definition called "BOOST_AUTO_LINK_NOMANGLE" which toggles this behaviour.
Another triumph of mediocrity for Microsoft.

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