Why can t Visual Studio find my DLL

Question

In Visual Studio 2010  under VC   Directories  gt  Executable Directories  I have specified the path to glew32d dll  However  when I run the executable  it still complains   On the other hand  if I copy the DLL into the local folder and run the executable then  it doesn t complain   Can someone please tell me how to fix this  Also  why is Visual Studio not recognizing that path   Update Scenario  I currently use a template project which I use as a starter code for a lot of my projects  This template depends on glew32d dll  I usually store all dependent dlls in a common bin folder  I was hoping to reference this folder and Visual studio could read the dlls from there  instead of me having to copy the dlls everytime  What would be a good way to handle this

User · Answer

I ve experienced same problem with same lib  found a solution here on SO      Search MSDN for  How to  Set Environment Variables for Projects      It s Project Properties Configuration Properties Debugging    Environment  and  Merge Environment  properties for those who are in   a rush        The syntax is NAME VALUE and macros can be used  for example      OutDir         For example  to prepend C  Windows Temp to the PATH   PATH C  WINDOWS Temp  PATH        Similarly  to append   TargetDir  DLLS to the PATH   PATH  PATH    TargetDir  DLLS     answered by Multicollinearity here  How do I set a path in visual studio

User · Answer

try  configuration properties -  debugging -  environment  and set the PATH variable in run-time

User · Answer

Specifying the path to the DLL file in your project s settings does not ensure that your application will find the DLL at run-time  You only told Visual Studio how to find the files it needs  That has nothing to do with how the program finds what it needs  once built   Placing the DLL file into the same folder as the executable is by far the simplest solution  That s the default search path for dependencies  so you won t need to do anything special if you go that route  To avoid having to do this manually each time  you can create a Post-Build Event for your project that will automatically copy the DLL into the appropriate directory after a build completes   Alternatively  you could deploy the DLL to the Windows side-by-side cache  and add a manifest to your application that specifies the location

User · Answer

To add to Oleg s answer   I was able to find the DLL at runtime by appending Visual Studio s   ExecutablePath  to the PATH environment variable in Configuration Properties- Debugging  This macro is exactly what s defined in the Configuration Properties- VC   Directories- Executable Directories field   so if you have that setup to point to any DLLs you need  simply adding this to your PATH makes finding the DLLs at runtime easy     I actually don t know if the   ExecutablePath  macro uses the project s Executable Directories setting or the global Property Pages  Executable Directories setting  Since I have all of my libraries that I often use configured through the Property Pages  these directories show up as defaults for any new projects I create

[c++] Why can't Visual Studio find my DLL?

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