[visual-studio] Visual C++: How to disable specific linker warnings?

I'm using a library from CGAL which during the linking stage of my code compilation produces a lot of linking warnings of this form:

warning LNK4099: PDB 'vc80.pdb' was not found with 'gmp-vc80-mt-sgd.lib' or at 'vc80.pdb'; linking object as if no debug info

How do I turn off this specific linker warning under Visual C++/Studio 2008?

Note that I do not have any control on the external (CGAL) library which I am using. I cannot/donot want to get into recompiling the external library. Hence, the need to fix the messages at my end.

Update 2018-10-16

Reportedly, as of VS 2013, this warning can be disabled. See the comment by @Mark Ransom.

Original Answer

You can't disable that specific warning.

According to Geoff Chappell the 4099 warning is treated as though it's too important to ignore, even by using in conjunction with /wx (which would treat warnings as errors and ignore the specified warning in other situations)

Here is the relevant text from the link:

Not Quite Unignorable Warnings

For some warning numbers, specification in a /ignore option is accepted but not necessarily acted upon. Should the warning occur while the /wx option is not active, then the warning message is still displayed, but if the /wx option is active, then the warning is ignored. It is as if the warning is thought important enough to override an attempt at ignoring it, but not if the user has put too high a price on unignored warnings.

The following warning numbers are affected:

4200, 4203, 4204, 4205, 4206, 4207, 4208, 4209, 4219, 4231 and 4237

The PDB file is typically used to store debug information. This warning is caused probably because the file vc80.pdb is not found when linking the target object file. Read the MSDN entry on LNK4099 here.

Alternatively, you can turn off debug information generation from the Project Properties > Linker > Debugging > Generate Debug Info field.

For the benefit of others, I though I'd include what I did.

Since you cannot get Visual Studio (2010 in my case) to ignore the LNK4204 warnings, my approach was to give it what it wanted: the pdb files. As I was using open source libraries in my case, I have the code building the pdb files already.

BUT, the default is to name all of the PDF files the same thing: vc100.pdb in my case. As you need a .pdb for each and every .lib, this creates a problem, especially if you are using something like ImageMagik, which creates about 20 static .lib files. You cannot have 20 lib files in one directory (which your application's linker references to link in the libraries from) and have all the 20 .pdb files called the same thing.

My solution was to go and rebuild my static library files, and configure VS2010 to name the .pdb file with respect to the PROJECT. This way, each .lib gets a similarly named .pdb, and you can put all of the LIBs and PDBs in one directory for your project to use.

So for the "Debug" configuraton, I edited:

Properties->Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Output Files -> Program Database File Name from

$(IntDir)vc$(PlatformToolsetVersion).pdb

to be the following value:

$(OutDir)vc$(PlatformToolsetVersion)D$(ProjectName).pdb

Now rather than somewhere in the intermediate directory, the .pdb files are written to the output directory, where the .lib files are also being written, AND most importantly, they are named with a suffix of D+project name. This means each library project produduces a project .lib and a project specific .pdb.

I'm now able to copy all of my release .lib files, my debug .lib files and the debug .pdb files into one place on my development system, and the project that uses that 3rd party library in debug mode, has the pdb files it needs in debug mode.

(For the record and before the thread disappears on the msdn forums) You can't disable the warning (at least under VS2010) because it is on the list of the warnings that can't be disabled (so /wd4099 will not work), but what you can do instead is patch link.exe (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\link.exe) to remove it from said list . Sounds like a jackhammer, i know. It works though.

For instance, if you want to remove the warning for 4099, open link.exe with an hex editor, goto line 15A0 which reads 03 10 (little endian for 4099) and replace it with FF 00 (which does not exist.)

EDIT: don't use vc80 / Visual Studio 2005, but Visual Studio 2008 / vc90 versions of the CGAL library (maybe from here).

Linker Tools Warning LNK4099:

You could also compile with /Z7, so the pdb doesn't need to be used, or remove the /DEBUG linker option if you do not have .pdb files for the objects you are linking.

You cannot disable linker warning 4099, as said @John Weldon.

You should rebuild library with some project configuration changes. You have several options:

• Save PDB file with debug information is same folder where you save .lib file. Set value "$(OutDir)$(TargetName).pdb" to Properties->C/C++->Output Files-Program Database File Name
• Save debug information in .lib file. Set value "C7 compatible (/Z7)" to Properties->C/C++->General->Debug Information Format
• Disable generation debug information for this library. Remove value from Properties->C/C++->General->Debug Information Format

I suspect /ignore is a VC6 link.exe option. for VS2005 and VS2008's linker there's no documented /ignore option available, but the linker looks just ignore the "/ignore:XXX" option, no error and no effect.