Linking dll in Visual Studio

Question

How can I add a  dll in Visual Studio 2010  I just cannot find the option there

User · Answer

You don t add or link directly against a DLL  you link against the LIB produced by the DLL   A LIB provides symbols and other necessary data to either include a library in your code  static linking  or refer to the DLL  dynamic linking    To link against a LIB  you need to add it to the project Properties -  Linker -  Input -  Additional Dependencies list  All LIB files here will be used in linking  You can also use a pragma like so    pragma comment lib   dll lib     With static linking  the code is included in your executable and there are no runtime dependencies  Dynamic linking requires a DLL with matching name and symbols be available within the search path  which is not just the path or system directory

User · Answer

I find it useful to understand the underlying tools  These are cl exe  compiler  and link exe  linker   You need to tell the compiler the signatures of the functions you want to call in the dynamic library  by including the library s header  and you need to tell the linker what the library is called and how to call it  by including the  implib  or import library    This is roughly the same process gcc uses for linking to dynamic libraries on  nix  only the library object file differs   Knowing the underlying tools means you can more quickly find the appropriate settings in the IDE and allows you to check that the commandlines generated are correct   Example  Say A exe depends B dll  You need to include B s header in A cpp   include  B h   then compile and link with B lib   cl A cpp  c  EHsc link A obj B lib   The first line generates A obj  the second generates A exe  The  c flag tells cl not to link and  EHsc specifies what kind of C   exception handling the binary should use  there s no default  so you have to specify something    If you don t specify  c cl will call link for you  You can use the  link flag to specify additional arguments to link and do it all at once if you like   cl A cpp  EHsc  link B lib   If B lib is not on the INCLUDE path you can give a relative or absolute path to it or add its parent directory to your include path with the  I flag   If you re calling from cygwin  as I do  replace the forward slashes with dashes   If you write  pragma comment lib   B lib   in A cpp you re just telling the compiler to leave a comment in A obj telling the linker to link to B lib  It s equivalent to specifying B lib on the link commandline

User · Answer

On Windows you do not link with a  dll file directly  ndash  you must use the accompanying  lib file instead  To do that go to Project - gt  Properties - gt  Configuration Properties - gt  Linker - gt  Additional Dependencies and add path to your  lib as a next line    You also must make sure that the  dll file is either in the directory contained by the  PATH  environment variable or that its copy is in Output Directory  by default  this is  Debug Release under your project s folder    If you don t have access to the  lib file  one alternative is to load the  dll manually during runtime using WINAPI functions such as LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress

User · Answer

Assume that the source file you want to compile is main cpp and your example dll dll and example dll lib   now run cl exe main cpp  EHsc  link example dll lib now you may get main exe

[c++] Linking dll in Visual Studio

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