I have a set of statically-compiled libraries, with fairly deep-running dependencies between the libraries. For example, the executable X uses libraries A and B, A uses library C, and B uses libraries C and D:
X -> A
A -> C
X -> B
B -> C
B -> D
When I link X with A and B, I don't want to get errors if C and D were not also added to the list of libraries—the fact that A and B use these libraries internally is an implementation detail that X should not need to know about. Also, when new dependencies are added anywhere in the dependency tree, the project file of any program that uses A or B would have to be reconfigured. For a deep dependency tree, the list of required libraries can become really long and hard to maintain.
So, I am using the "Additional Dependencies" setting of the Librarian section in the A project, adding C.lib. And in the same section of B's project, I add C.lib and D.lib. The effect of this is that the librarian bundles C.lib into A.lib, and C.lib and D.lib into B.lib.
When I link X, however, both A.lib and B.lib contain their own copy of C.lib. This leads to tons of warnings along the lines of
A.lib(c.obj) : warning LNK4006 "symbol" (_symbol) already defined in B.lib(c.obj); second definition ignored.
How can I accomplish this without getting warnings? Is there a way to simply disable the warning, or is there a better way?
EDIT: I have seen more than one answer suggesting that, for the lack of a better alternative, I simply disable the warning. Well, this is part of the problem: I don't even know how to disable it!
As far as I know you can't disable linker warnings.
However, you can ignore some of them, using command line parameter of linker eg. /ignore:4006
Put it in your project properties under linker->command line setting (don't remember exact location).
Also read this:
Link /ignore
MSDN Forum - hiding LNK warnings
Wacek
Update If you can build all involved project in single solution, try this:
Put all project in one sln.
Remove all references to static libraries from projects' linker or librarian properties.
There is "Project Dependencies..." option in context menu for each project in Solution Explorer. Use it to define dependencies between project.
It should work. It doesn't invalidate anything I said before, the basic model of building C/C++ programs stays the same. VS (at least 2005 and newer) is simply smart enough to add all needed static libraries to linker command line. You can see it in project properties.
Of course this method won't help if you need to use already compiled static libraries. Then you need to add them all to exe or dll project that directly or indirectly uses them.
I don't think you can do anything about that. You should remove references to other static libs from static libs projects and add all needed static libs projects as dependences of exe or dll projects. You will just have to live with fact that any project that includes A.lib or B.lib also needs to include C.lib.
As an alternative you can turn your libraries into dlls which provide a richer model.
Statically compiled libraries simply aren't real libraries with dependency information, etc, like dlls. See how, when you build them, you don't really need to provide libraries they depend on? Headers are all that's needed. See? You can't even really say static libraries depend on something.
Static library is just an archive of compiled and not yet linked object code. It's not consistent whole. Each object file is compiled separately and remains separate entity inside the library. Linking happens when you build exe or dll. That's when you need to provide all object code. That's when all the symbol and dependency resolving happens.
If you add other static libraries to static library dependencies, librarian will simply copy all code together. Then, when building exe, linker will give you lots of warnings about duplicate symbols. You might be able to block those warnings (I don't know how) but be careful. It may conceal real problems like real duplicate symbols with differing definitions. And if you have static data defined in libraries, it probably won't work anyway.
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 9.00.x (link.exe) knows argument /ignore:4006
You could create one library which contains A, B, C & D and then link X against that.
Since it's a library, only object modules which are actually referenced will get linked into the final executable.
Note that one way of getting this warning is to define a member function in a header without the inline statement:
// Foo.h
class Foo
{
void someFunction();
};
void Foo:someFunction() // Warning! - should be "inline void Foo::someFunction()"
{
// do stuff
}
The problem is you are not localizing library C's symbols. So you have a ODR violation when you link in A and B. You need to have a way to make these private. By default all symbols are exported. One way to do this is to have a special linker definition file for both A and B that explicitly mention which files need to be exported.
[1] ODR = One Definition Rule.
I think the best course of action here will be to ignore/disable the linker warnings(LNK4006) since C.lib needs to be part of both A.Lib and B.lib and A.Lib does not need to know that B.lib itself uses C.Lib.
This may not fix your link error, but it might help with your dependency tree issue.
What I do, is just use a #pragma to include a lib in the .cpp file that needs it. For example:
#pragma comment(lib:"wsock32")
Like I said, I'm not sure it would keep the symbols in that object file, I'd have to whip up an example to try it out.
Poor flodin seems frustrated that nobody will explain how to disable the linker warnings. Well, I've had a similar problem, and for years I have simply lived with the fact that several hundred warnings were displayed. Now, however, thanks to the info from Link /ignore, I figured out how to disable the linker warnings.
I'm using Visual Studio 2008. In Project -> Settings -> Configuration Properties -> Librarian -> Command Line -> Additional Options, I added "/ignore:4006" (without the quotes). Now my warnings are gone!
Related
I'm getting a linker error indicating that the linker was unable to open a file (a static library) and therefore it fails. I am having a very difficult time troubleshooting this error because I never told the linker to link to the file which it is failing to open.
I am telling the linker to link to several static libraries. Many of the libraries I am linking to are wxWidgets static libraries. I don't need ALL of the modules from wxWidgets, so there are some which I am linking to and many which I am not. The file which the linker can't open is 'wxbase31ud_net.lib'. Like I said, that file is not among the libraries I am linking to. My immediate thought was that this dependency was being introduced implicitly somehow, perhaps by one of the wxwidgets libraries I WAS linking to. I didn't think static linkage worked this way but I didn't have any other ideas. I have been investigating that possibility and I've found nothing which indicates that is the case.
I set the build output verbosity to maximum, and the 'wxbase31ud_net.lib' is never mentioned anywhere until the error is reported.
I confirmed in my cmake project that the file in question was never passed back to me from the FindWxWidgets module, and was never referenced in any of the lists of files I associate with the target.
I grepped through the entire project directory and found no reference to the file anywhere, including the cmake-generated project files (visual studio project files).
What could be causing the linker to try and open this file?
Edit: Also, to be clear, the error I'm seeing is LNK1104
it's probably from a #pragma comment(lib,"???") except in the case of wx the argument to the pragma may be complex macros and it will be difficult to grep. This particular one may be from setup.h with #pragma comment(lib, wxWX_LIB_NAME("base", "")). You should be solving this by adding the directory with the wx libs to the linker's search directories.
The answer by zeromus is correct, this is almost certainly indeed due to including msvc/wx/setup.h which contains #pragma comment(lib)s. Possible solutions:
Simplest: build all the libraries, this will solve the errors and it's not a problem to link with a library you don't use.
Also simple but slightly less obvious: predefine wxNO_NET_LIB when building your project, this will prevent the file above from autolinking this particular library. You may/will need to define more wxNO_XXX_LIB symbols if you're missing other libraries, of course.
Less simple but arguably the least magic too: stop using $(WXWIN)/include/msvc in your include path, then wx/setup.h under it won't be included and nothing will be linked in automatically. The drawback is that you will have to specify all the libraries you do need to link with manually.
c++-project, say, foo is maintained by the cmake.
One wants to create one library libfoo.a (with all classes/methods/functions created at the whole source-tree) to make possible creating programs that could linked to the library with -lfoo.
ok, let's consider now a toy example, and the prolbem will be clear. Directory foo (root of the project) contains directories a, and b. Two CmakeLists.txt are created:
# a/CMakeLists.txt
add_library(A <a_sources>)
# b/CMakeLists.txt
add_library(B <b_sources>)
And one CMakeLists.txt for root directory:
add_subdirectory(a)
add_subdirectory(b)
add_library(foo <foo_sources>
target_link_libraries(foo A B)
That was a surprise for me: after building libfoo.a contains only methods from foo_sources, and a_sources,b_sources are excluded.
That is ok in the case when executables are built with the same project: while creating executables cmake "guesses" that a and b must be linked if it is linked to foo.
But in the case executable is created "outside" project to use library foo one must link with -lfoo -la -lb, now imagine a project with lots of subdirectories - how to deal with it? so question is "how to create one library, aggregating methods from whole project with means of cmake?"
Googling led me to relatively recently embedded (appeared in 2.8.8) OBJECT library opportunity. Nice example of using it is shown here. Now the problem above can be solved with that:
# a/CMakeLists.txt
add_library(A OBJECT <a_sources>)
# b/CMakeLists.txt
add_library(B OBJECT <b_sources>)
# foo/CMakeLists.txt
add_subdirectory(a)
add_subdirectory(b)
add_library(foo <foo_sources> $<TARGET_OBJECTS:A> $<TARGET_OBJECTS:B>)
problem seems to be solved, unfortunately, not quite.
if dependency chain is longer than 2, for example, foo depends on A, which depends on B, problem still remains.
That is because,
Object libraries may contain only sources (and headers) that compile to object files.
and
Object libraries cannot be imported, exported, installed, or linked.
(quotes are taken from the same link)
I've tried several combinations of target_link_library(), add_library(), add_library(... OBJECT ..) trying to link A and B to foo without success (error during cmake-process.)
I must be loosing something simple, please help, thank you!
I am not sure is it important: project is maintained at the linux.
I think you're getting tangled up in the term "depends on". If you're building a library named foo and it has two parts, A and B, it doesn't matter whether A depends on B; the library should contain both. The CMake code you've shown will build foo properly.
Yep, I support answer #Pete Becker# . But it should be said as well that those libraries a $<TARGET_OBJECTS:A> and $<TARGET_OBJECTS:B> actually not a libraries at all, but rather cmake internal list of object modules. There is no dependencies between compilation of object modules (except auto-generated sources) so they can be done in any order and in parallel.
I guess more correct term for your intention is gathering together several TARGET_OBJECTS under single object library. That's really bad that you can't write add_library(B OBJECT b.cpp $<TARGET_OBJECTS:A>). But you always can implement this by yourself:
add_library(A OBJECT a.cpp)
set(A_OBJECTS $<TARGET_OBJECTS:A>)
add_library(B OBJECT b.cpp)
set(B_OBJECTS $<TARGET_OBJECTS:B> ${A_OBJECTS})
add_library(foo ${B_OBJECTS})
I.e just create special variables _OBJECTS to use them whenever you want to include those object libraries in library, executable or as part of other object library with that _OBJECTS flavor.
In every platform there are various versions of a given library: multi-threaded, debug, dynamic, etc..
Correct me if I am wrong here, but in Linux an object can link to any version of a library just fine, regardless of how its compiled. For example, there is no need to use any special flags at compile time to specify whether the link will eventually be to a dynamic or a static version of the run-time libraries (clarification: I am not talking about creating dynamic/static libraries, I am talking about linking to them - so -fPIC doesn't apply). Same goes for debug or optimized version of libraries.
Why in MSVC (Windows in general with other compilers. true?) I need to recompile the code every time in order to link to different versions of libraries? I am talking the /MD, /MT, /MTd, /MDd, etc flags. Is the code actually using different system headers each time. If so, why?
I would really appreciate any pointers to solid documentation that discusses these library matters in Windows for a C/C++ programmer..
thanks!
The compiler setting does very little other than simple change some macro definitions. Its microsoft's c-runtime header files that change their behaviour based on the runtime selected.
First, the header files use a # pragma directive to embed in the object file a directive specifying which .lib file to include, choosing one of: msvcrt.lib, msvcrtd.lib, libcmt.lib and mibcmtd.lib
The directives look like this
#ifdef <release dll runtime>
#pragma comment(lib,"msvcrt.lib")
#endif
Next, it also modifies a macro definition used on all c-rt functions that adds the __declspec(dllimport) directive if a dll runtime was selected. the effect of this directive is to change the imported symbol from, say, '_strcmp' to '__imp__strcmp'.
The dll import libraries (msvcrt.lib and msvcrtd.lib) export their symbols (to the linker) as __imp_<function name>, which means that, in the Visual C++ world, once you have compiled code to link against the dll runtimes you cannot change your mind - they will NOT link against a static runtime.
Of course, the reverse is not the case - dll import libraries actually export their public symbols both ways: with and without the __imp_ prefix.
Which means that code built against a static runtime CAN be later co-erced into linking with the dll or static runtimes.
If you are building a static library for other consumers, you should ensure that your compiler settings include:
One of the static library settings, so that consumers of your .lib can choose themselves which c-runtime to use, and
Set the 'Omit Default Library Name' (/Zl)flag. This tells the compiler to ignore the #pragma comment(lib,... directives, so the obj files and resulting lib does NOT have any kind of implicit runtime dependency. If you don't do this, users of your lib who choose a different runtime setting will see confusing messages about duplicate symbols in libc.lib and msvcrt.lib which they will have to bypass by using the ignore default libraries flag.
These using these compiler options have two effects. The automatically #define a macro that may be used by header files (and your own code) to do different things. This effects only a small part of the C runtime, and you can check the headers to see if it's happening in your case.
The other thing is that the C++ compiler embeds a comment in your object file that tells the linker to automatically include a particular flavor of the MSVC runtime, whether you specify that library at link time or not.
This is convenient for small programs, where you simply type at a command prompt cl myprogram.cpp to compile and link, producing myprogram.exe.
You can defeat automatic linking of the commented-in flavor of the c-runtime by passing /nodefaultlib to the linker. And then specify a different flavor of the c-runtime instead. This will work if you are careful not to depend on the #defines for _MT and
_DLL (keep in mind that the standard C headers might be looking at these also).
I don't recommend this, but if you have a reason to need to do this, it can be made to work in most cases.
If you want to know what parts of the C header files behave differently, you should just search for _MT and _DLL in the headers and see.
All of the options use the same header files, however they all imply different #define which affect the header files. So they need to be recompiled.
The switches also link to the appropriate library, but the recompile is not because of the linking.
See here for a list of what is defined when you use each.
I don't know if it's possible to do this, but I would like the /NODEFAULTLIB to be applied to a static library project.
I have many application projects (A.exe, B.dll, C.dll) that use a common static library D.lib.
This library has a lot of code and also has other .lib dependencies as well. One of them is the openssl library, which seems to have been built for win32 against the Release version of the CRT (i don't have the original project/sources).
So far, to avoid the mixing of the Release/Debug versions of CRT, I have to put the /NODEFAULTLIB:msvcrt.lib linker directive in all leaf projects (A.exe, B.dll). This works but I think it's not the ideal way of dealing with that issue.
I tried to put this property in D.lib project, but it has no effect.
Is there a way to force msvc++ to ignore the msvcrt.lib dependency from the 3rd party library?
A .lib does not have any linker settings because you don't link it, you link to it. A .lib is just an archive of .obj files, sort of like an uncompressed .zip file - that's why you have to put the setting on all projects that link to it.
If you're using VS2005+ you could use property sheets so that you only have to put the setting in one place and then use that property sheet in all projects.
However, OpenSSL is just that - Open Source, so you should be able to get the source for the version you are using and build it again (and add it to your version control system of course). I thought OpenSSL could be built as a DLL or LIB, which would solve your problem as the DLL would not interfere with the linking of your code.
Failing that, you always have the option of slitting your functionality out into a separate DLL so that you only have issues with one project.
To prevent your distributed static link library from depending on a specific MSVC runtime library you need to set this compiler option (in Visual Studio 2010 it looks like):
Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Advanced -> Omit Default Library Name = Yes (/ZI)
Now your users can link to your release built static lib from their debug build and not try to link to the incorrect runtime library causing problems, as well as linkers warnings.
Note that may cause link errors if your library actually depends on a specific runtime library or its behavior, and compatible components are not provided in some other way.
My understanding is that if library LIB in linked statically into a DLL, the DLL contains already all relevant code from LIB. Therefore, this coupling cannot be removed. This is just based on my understanding of statical linking, not on experiments.
Can anyone explain how compilation works?
I can't seem to figure out how compilation works..
To be more specific, here's an example.. I'm trying to write some code in MSVC++ 6 to load a Lua state..
I've already:
set the additional directories for the library and include files to the right directories
used extern "C" (because Lua is C only or so I hear)
include'd the right header files
But i'm still getting some errors in MSVC++6 about unresolved external symbols (for the Lua functions that I used).
As much as I'd like to know how to solve this problem and move on, I think it would be much better for me if I came to understand the underlying processes involved, so could anyone perhaps write a nice explanation for this? What I'm looking to know is the process.. It could look like this:
Step 1:
Input: Source code(s)
Process: Parsing (perhaps add more detail here)
Output: whatever is output here..
Step 2:
Input: Whatever was output from step 1, plus maybe whatever else is needed (libraries? DLLs? .so? .lib? )
Process: whatever is done with the input
Output: whatever is output
and so on..
Thanks..
Maybe this will explain what symbols are, what exactly "linking" is, what "object" code or whatever is..
Thanks.. Sorry for being such a noob..
P.S. This doesn't have to be language specific.. But feel free to express it in the language you're most comfortable in.. :)
EDIT: So anyway, I was able to get the errors resolved, it turns out that I have to manually add the .lib file to the project; simply specifying the library directory (where the .lib resides) in the IDE settings or project settings does not work..
However, the answers below have somewhat helped me understand the process better. Many thanks!.. If anyone still wants to write up a thorough guide, please do.. :)
EDIT: Just for additional reference, I found two articles by one author (Mike Diehl) to explain this quite well.. :)
Examining the Compilation Process: Part 1
Examining the Compilation Process: Part 2
From source to executable is generally a two stage process for C and associated languages, although the IDE probably presents this as a single process.
1/ You code up your source and run it through the compiler. The compiler at this stage needs your source and the header files of the other stuff that you're going to link with (see below).
Compilation consists of turning your source files into object files. Object files have your compiled code and enough information to know what other stuff they need, but not where to find that other stuff (e.g., the LUA libraries).
2/ Linking, the next stage, is combining all your object files with libraries to create an executable. I won't cover dynamic linking here since that will complicate the explanation with little benefit.
Not only do you need to specify the directories where the linker can find the other code, you need to specify the actual library containing that code. The fact that you're getting unresolved externals indicates that you haven't done this.
As an example, consider the following simplified C code (xx.c) and command.
#include <bob.h>
int x = bob_fn(7);
cc -c -o xx.obj xx.c
This compiles the xx.c file to xx.obj. The bob.h contains the prototype for bob_fn() so that compilation will succeed. The -c instructs the compiler to generate an object file rather than an executable and the -o xx.obj sets the output file name.
But the actual code for bob_fn() is not in the header file but in /bob/libs/libbob.so, so to link, you need something like:
cc -o xx.exe xx.obj -L/bob/libs;/usr/lib -lbob
This creates xx.exe from xx.obj, using libraries (searched for in the given paths) of the form libbob.so (the lib and .so are added by the linker usually). In this example, -L sets the search path for libraries. The -l specifies a library to find for inclusion in the executable if necessary. The linker usually takes the "bob" and finds the first relevant library file in the search path specified by -L.
A library file is really a collection of object files (sort of how a zip file contains multiple other files, but not necessarily compressed) - when the first relevant occurrence of an undefined external is found, the object file is copied from the library and added to the executable just like your xx.obj file. This generally continues until there are no more unresolved externals. The 'relevant' library is a modification of the "bob" text, it may look for libbob.a, libbob.dll, libbob.so, bob.a, bob.dll, bob.so and so on. The relevance is decided by the linker itself and should be documented.
How it works depends on the linker but this is basically it.
1/ All of your object files contain a list of unresolved externals that they need to have resolved. The linker puts together all these objects and fixes up the links between them (resolves as many externals as possible).
2/ Then, for every external still unresolved, the linker combs the library files looking for an object file that can satisfy the link. If it finds it, it pulls it in - this may result in further unresolved externals as the object pulled in may have its own list of externals that need to be satisfied.
3/ Repeat step 2 until there are no more unresolved externals or no possibility of resolving them from the library list (this is where your development was at, since you hadn't included the LUA library file).
The complication I mentioned earlier is dynamic linking. That's where you link with a stub of a routine (sort of a marker) rather than the actual routine, which is later resolved at load time (when you run the executable). Things such as the Windows common controls are in these DLLs so that they can change without having to relink the objects into a new executable.
Step 1 - Compiler:
Input: Source code file[s]
Process: Parsing source code and translating into machine code
Output: Object file[s], which consist[s] of:
The names of symbols which are defined in this object, and which this object file "exports"
The machine code associated with each symbol that's defined in this object file
The names of symbols which are not defined in this object file, but on which the software in this object file depends and to which it must subsequently be linked, i.e. names which this object file "imports"
Step 2 - Linking:
Input:
Object file[s] from step 1
Libraries of other objects (e.g. from the O/S and other software)
Process:
For each object that you want to link
Get the list of symbols which this object imports
Find these symbols in other libraries
Link the corresponding libraries to your object files
Output: a single, executable file, which includes the machine code from all all your objects, plus the objects from libraries which were imported (linked) to your objects.
The two main steps are compilation and linking.
Compilation takes single compilation units (those are simply source files, with all the headers they include), and create object files. Now, in those object files, there are a lot of functions (and other stuff, like static data) defined at specific locations (addresses). In the next step, linking, a bit of extra information about these functions is also needed: their names. So these are also stored. A single object file can reference functions (because it wants to call them when to code is run) that are actually in other object files, but since we are dealing with a single object file here, only symbolic references (their 'names') to those other functions are stored in the object file.
Next comes linking (let's restrict ourselves to static linking here). Linking is where the object files that were created in the first step (either directly, or after they have been thrown together into a .lib file) are taken together and an executable is created.
In the linking step, all those symbolic references from one object file or lib to another are resolved (if they can be), by looking up the names in the correct object, finding the address of the function, and putting the addresses in the right place.
Now, to explain something about the 'extern "C"' thing you need:
C does not have function overloading. A function is always recognizable by its name. Therefore, when you compile code as C code, only the real name of the function is stored in the object file.
C++, however, has something called 'function / method overloading'. This means that the name of a function is no longer enough to identify it. C++ compilers therefore create 'names' for functions that include the prototypes of the function (since the name plus the prototype will uniquely identify a function). This is known as 'name mangling'.
The 'extern "C"' specification is needed when you want to use a library that has been compiled as 'C' code (for example, the pre-compiled Lua binaries) from a C++ project.
For your exact problem: if it still does not work, these hints might help:
* have the Lua binaries been compiled with the same version of VC++?
* can you simply compile Lua yourself, either within your VC solution, or as a separate project as C++ code?
* are you sure you have all the 'extern "C"' things correct?
You have to go into project setting and add a directory where you have that LUA library *.lib files somewhere on the "linker" tab. Setting called "including libraries" or something, sorry I can't look it up.
The reason you get "unresolved external symbols" is because compilation in C++ works in two stages. First, the code gets compiled, each .cpp file in it's own .obj file, then "linker" starts and join all that .obj files into .exe file. .lib file is just a bunch of .obj files merged together to make distribution of libraries just a little bit simplier.
So by adding all the "#include" and extern declaration you told the compiler that somewhere it would be possible to find code with those signatures but linker can't find that code because it doesn't know where those .lib files with actual code is placed.
Make sure you have read REDME of the library, usually they have rather detailed explanation of what you had to do to include it in your code.
You might also want to check this out: COMPILER, ASSEMBLER, LINKER AND LOADER: A BRIEF STORY.