Visual Studio 2012 - error LNK1104: cannot open file 'glew32.lib'

Question

I am having issues compiling a basic openGL program on VS 2012. I get a build error upon compiltation giving me:

1>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'glew32.lib'

I followed the instructions given to me by the documentation for GLEW.

In your OpenGL project open Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies -> add glew32.lib.

Also you must include #include in your sources; For that add path to your glew folder: Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properies -> General -> VC++ Directories -> Include Directories and Library Directories;

C/C++ Tab -> General -> Additional Include Directories - Add lib folder there

I have also added the glew32.dll onto my Debug folder within my project folder along with the executable. So far I keep getting this error.

If you need any more further clarification of the steps I have done please don't hesitate to ask

Answer 1

In all honesty, there is no real benefit to using the DLL version of glew (short of reduced executable size, but this hardly matters on modern Windows PCs).

It is not like you can simply drop a new version of the DLL into your application and use extensions that you never used before. Likewise, bug fixes are so infrequent/unnecessary with a library that basically just parses the extension spec. files that using the DLL as a means of fixing extension loading bugs in shipped software is also not practical. Statically linking to glew (this means glew32s.lib) makes much more sense in the long run.

The static linking library is also more portable on Windows, it will work with MSVC and MinGW (whereas the DLL library only works with MSVC). Link against glew32s and put that in whatever directory you decided to use for additional library dependencies.

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Here is a sample solution configuration for a project I wrote that uses glew. I have established a convention for this particular software where compile-time dependencies are stored under platform/<Subsystem>. Thus, I have glew32s.lib (32-bit) and glew64s.lib (64-bit) in ./Epsilon/platform/OpenGL/glew{32|64}s.lib

  

Answer 2

Steps to Use Classes form another project (Add header and solver linker errors)

1. To be able to add the header from another project, first go to "Properties > c++ > General > Additional Include Directories" and add the directory that contains the header. Now you will be able to add the header of the class from the other project, but running the project will still cause Linker Errors.

2. Add __declspec(dllexport) before the class you are using for the other project. This can be added in the header file of that class. This should be added right before the function or variable or class name. Now you will get a lib file. (if placed in wrong place, you can get this warning: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/eehkcz60.aspx)

3. "Properties > Linker > Additional Library Directories". Specify the location of the lib file that is generated.

4. "Properties > Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies”: Add the name of the lib file.

Answer 3

This sounds like the library has been specified as a dependency, but the linker/additional search path(s) has not been set to include the directory where the library is located.

This may help.

Answer 4

It happened to me under this situation, I clean the solution and build it again, then many errors like LNK1104 occur.

After trying to restart IIS, I build solution successfully without LNK1104 errors. I do not know why, but restarting IIS takes much more time than normal, so I guess something is used by other IIS worker process.

Just give a shot to see if this magic happens on you.

Answer 5

This question is old and marked solved, but I had a similar problem symptoms with a completely different solution. So just in case anyone else stumbles in here:
It appeared that because I had 2 projects under one solution (a dll and an exe), the building order was mixed (from the output window):

1> Rebuilding project1..
2> Rebuilding project1..
1> file1.cpp
2> file1.cpp

and so on. By the message you copied, it appears you too have more than one project under one solution. One project was looking for the *.lib file that the other build hadn't created yet.
Solution:
Right click on "main" project -> Build Dependencies -> Project Dependencies.. -> Mark which project the main one depends on.