Question

I am using Visual Studio 2008 C++ project (Visa 32 bit).

I have the following #include directive in my source code.

#include <example/header.h>

In my include path I specify the parent directory of ‘example’, i.e.

C:/.../include

where the full path to the header looks like

C:/.../include/example/header.h

However, ‘example’ is a symbolic link (A ‘.lnk’ created via file explorer ‘new shortcut’). I get the following error

c:…\foo.cpp(37) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: ‘example/header.h’: No such file or directory

If I replace the symbolic link with the actual directory, the project will compile correctly. For practical reasons I need it to be a symbolic link. Is there anyway to make the Visual Studio pre-processor follow the link?

Answer 1

The link is a symbolic link (.lnk)

Are you sure you’re not creating a shortcut? Shortcuts work on a higher level than symbolic links and mean nothing to applications.

Conversely, symbolic links (if properly created) should work fine with any application that reads/writes to files/folders.

For more details, you may wish to consider reading this article about symbolic links, which explains how you can create a symbolic link using mklink.

Here’s a helpful snippet from a comment on that article by “Bernard Kerckenaere”:

• shortcut: on the operating system level (to applications who wish to
  read/write the link, it’s just a
  meaningless file)

• soft link (or symbolic link): like a shortcut, but on the filesystem level
  (applications reading/writing the
  link, will actually read/write the
  file linked to)
  …
  this will work across partitions, or drives

• hard link: only for files, what happens is that there are multiple
  file entries that point to the same
  physical data, when you delete one
  entry, the other will still work, the
  data won’t be gone until all entries
  are deleted (if with a soft link you
  delete the original directory, the
  link won’t work anymore!)
  -> you can obviously only create hard links to a file on the same partition

What you want to create is a symbolic link which you can do with the /D parameter using mlink.