When I compile with Compaq Visual Fortran, I get these errors (when it starts the linker process) that should be located in a .lib file I thought I added to the workspace:
X30XFULL.OBJ : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _BCON@4
X30XFULL.OBJ : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _RCON@16
According to where I’ve googled about, it looks like Compaq Visual Fortran (Version 6, FYI) can’t find the library files…
My main question is, how do I use them? Could there possibly be other missing files? Here is what I’ve tried:
- Right Click->Adding the files in the FileView window
- Going under Project->Settings, Clicking the Link tab, and under the input category, adding the library files under object/library modules (bprop.lib rprop.lib) and having the Additional Library Path point to where the files are. I also did this under the Resources tab and where it says “Additional Resource Include Directories,” I put the directory of where these files were located.
- To cover my bases, I also put these files in where the project workspace file, where the compiled executable file would be generated, and pretty much any place I could think of that CVF might possibly look to in order to find these files.
A little background:
I have this Fortran executable that was last compiled in the 90s. From my research, it’s a 16-bit compiled one which won’t work on a 64-bit machine.
The original code has, at least from what we can gather, 16 bit compiled libraries. Without the original compiler, we can’t figure out how to look at or use them. We also have a (semi)equivalent library file that’s actually a .FOR file. For all we know, the BPROP.FOR and BPROP.LIB could be the same file (they were found in the same source code area). If we use the BPROP.FOR file, the program can compile, but we are having issues with results that we’ve traced down to information that is used/gathered/processed in that file.
However, we do have 32-bit versions of (what we think) are the same .lib files. So, we’re trying to use that, which is what is being used to compile the Fortran executable which results in the errors above.
Found the answer, at least for me. I don’t know how easy it’ll be to extrapolate if anyone else finds these answers, but this is how I solved it.
With the old Fortran libraries, all I had to do was add them to the FileList view that has all of the different fortran files (.FOR, etc). I did not have to add these libraries in the settings like I mentioned, but that will work as well. Other then that, I didn’t need to add any extra declarations or anything similar.
What we did find out is that the function in question (BCON and RCON) that calls those .LIB files required an additional argument. The only way I found this out was examining other source code that used those libaries, so if anyone is stuck like I was, that would be a good place to start. Alternatively, if you can read the .lib file in a hex editor, you can kind of make out functions and their arguments.
Of course, if you have the original source code for said arguments, that’s even better. 🙂