Bob Rossi wrote:
Hi,
I've got a quick question hopefully. I'm building pcre on windows. I've
been able to build it into a dll and link against it with a small
program. However, when I build a static library, and link it with a
small program, I get the missing symbols error.
I know the symbols are in the library because nm tells me so,
$ nm -g /home/bobbybrasko/download/pcre/pcre/install/lib/libpcre.a|grep compile
libpcre_la-pcre_compile.o:
00005550 T _pcre_compile
Here is the link line of the small program,
$ gcc-4.1 -g -Wall -o test test.c
-L/home/bobbybrasko/download/pcre/pcre/install/lib \
-lpcreposix -lpcre
-I/home/bobbybrasko/download/pcre/pcre/install/include
C:/WINDOWS/TEMP/ccgGAsIC.o(.text+0x2e): In function `main':
C:/msys/1.0/home/bobbybrasko/download/pcre/pcre/build/tmp/test.c:13:
undefined reference to `_imp__pcre_compile' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Does anyone understand why I'd be getting these errors? Are .def files
important for static windows libraries or only for dll's? Any advice?
First of all, obviously "_imp__pcre_compile" is not the same as
"_pcre_compile" so the error message is legitimate - the symbol that
it's actually looking for is not there.
The next question is, why is it looking for an import symbol instead of
using the real symbol. The answer to that must lie in your header files;
they probably declare the function to be a DLL export, which causes the
compiler to generate references to an import symbol. Have a look at your
header files. Remove any DLL declspec's on any function declarations you
find there; modern linkers don't need them. I.e., the GNU linker is
smart enough to use an import symbol in place of a reference to a real
symbol. Apparently it won't do the opposite.
Unfortunately if a library exports variables as well, you need to
preserve the export declspecs there. This means for any Windows library
that you use, you have to know whether you will be using a static or a
dynamic version, whenever compiling an app that uses the library. Very
braindead, and there's no solution to that problem. The workaround is to
never export variables from your libraries, only functions/accessor methods.
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc
OpenLDAP Core Team http://www.openldap.org/project/
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