Question

I’m new to visual c++ and rusty with c++.

I created a dll project following the visual C++ directions. Now I want to test my dll to make sure it’s working. I created an empty project and put in tester.cpp. I added the dll to the project references and to the path. Then I try to run it.

Before I included stuff from my dll (“Hello world!”) it worked. Now that I’ve put in my stuff to reference the dll, it fails. The message is:

1>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file ‘C:\Users\thom\Documents\cworkspace\barnaby\Debug\barnaby.lib’

The thing I don’t understand is the reference links to the dll which exists at the path above. Here’s my code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

#include "barnaby.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
    std::vector<std::string> tzNames = Barnaby::TimeZoneFunctions::getTimezoneList();
    for(std::vector<std::string>::iterator iter = tzNames.begin(); iter != tzNames.end(); iter++){
        std::cout << *iter << std::endl;
    }
}

ideas?

Answer 1

OK, so I found the answer from http://binglongx.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/visual-c-does-not-generate-lib-file-for-a-dll-project/ which told me to include the following code in my header for the DLL:

#ifdef BARNABY_EXPORTS
#define BARNABY_API __declspec(dllexport)
#else
#define BARNABY_API __declspec(dllimport)
#endif

Then, each function I export you simply precede by:

BARNABY_API int add(){
}

All of this would have been prevented either by click the Export Symbols box on the new project DLL Wizard or by voting yes for lobotomies for application programmers.

Thanks for the help.