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digitalmars.D.learn - Linking on MS Windows.

reply ciechowoj <keepitsimplesirius gmail.com> writes:
Is default dmd linker (on MS Windows, OPTILINK) supposed to link 
against static libraries created with Visual Studio?

Specifically I want to link a project compiled on windows with 
dmd against pre-compiled library `libclang.lib` from LLVM suite. 
I'm pretty sure they used Visual Studio to compile the library.
Aug 05 2016
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-learn writes:
On Friday, August 05, 2016 18:28:48 ciechowoj via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:

 Is default dmd linker (on MS Windows, OPTILINK) supposed to link
 against static libraries created with Visual Studio?

 Specifically I want to link a project compiled on windows with
 dmd against pre-compiled library `libclang.lib` from LLVM suite.
 I'm pretty sure they used Visual Studio to compile the library.


dmc (and thus optlink) and VS use different library formats. So, you can't
mix any libraries between them unless you dynamically load them at runtime
(which can't be done with a statically linked library). Neither statically
linked libraries nor dynamically linked libraries compiled by one compile
can be mixed with those from the other.

I know that dmd supports VS' binary format and linker for 64-bit (dmc and
optlink were never updated to support 64-bit), and I think that 32-bit
support for using VS' library format and linker were added later. So, I'm
fairly certain that you could compile your D program to be compatible with
that statically linked library by using the right compiler flag with dmd.
But I don't use Windows much aside from work, so I'm not very familiar with
how to use dmd with Windows beyond the basics and am not going to be very
helpful in telling you how to actually do it. You might be able to figure it
out by looking at dmd's compiler flags, but if not, I'm sure that someone
else here who actually uses Windows with D will be able to tell you.

- Jonathan M Davis
Aug 05 2016
parent reply ciechowoj <keepitsimplesirius gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 18:37:43 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 I know that dmd supports VS' binary format and linker for 
 64-bit (dmc and optlink were never updated to support 64-bit), 
 and I think that 32-bit support for using VS' library format 
 and linker were added later. So, I'm fairly certain that you 
 could compile your D program to be compatible with that 
 statically linked library by using the right compiler flag with 
 dmd. But I don't use Windows much aside from work, so I'm not 
 very familiar with how to use dmd with Windows beyond the 
 basics and am not going to be very helpful in telling you how 
 to actually do it. You might be able to figure it out by 
 looking at dmd's compiler flags, but if not, I'm sure that 
 someone else here who actually uses Windows with D will be able 
 to tell you.

 - Jonathan M Davis


Owing to your reply I found this: 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36332219/linking-with-c-libraries-on-windows-with-dub

And it even seems to work. Thanks.
Aug 05 2016
parent reply ciechowoj <keepitsimplesirius gmail.com> writes:
I managed to compile both 32 and 64 bit release versions and it 
seems to work fine, however with 64-bit debug version I'm getting 
a strange error:

LINK : fatal error LNK1101: incorrect MSPDB120.DLL version; 
recheck installation of this product

Does anyone know why it is so? I'm compiling with -m64 switch, so 
I suppose the linker from Visual Studio is used by default.

Another question that is troubling me is why to use OPTLINK as a 
default for 32-bit version, if for 64-bit version a Visual Studio 
linker is used anyway?
Aug 06 2016
parent reply rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 06/08/2016 11:53 PM, ciechowoj wrote:

 Another question that is troubling me is why to use OPTLINK as a default
 for 32-bit version, if for 64-bit version a Visual Studio linker is used
 anyway?


Optlink does not support 64bit.
For 64bit support we use the MSVC tooling on Windows.

We provide Optlink so that we have support for Windows out of the box. 
Unfortunately since Optlink does not understand COFF, we are forced to 
provide a second command option to force MSVC tooling for 32bit usage.
Aug 06 2016
parent ciechowoj <keepitsimplesirius gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 6 August 2016 at 11:58:31 UTC, rikki cattermole 
wrote:

 We provide Optlink so that we have support for Windows out of 
 the box. Unfortunately since Optlink does not understand COFF, 
 we are forced to provide a second command option to force MSVC 
 tooling for 32bit usage.


That makes sense.
Aug 06 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent H.Loom <loom grossnet.az> writes:
On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 18:28:48 UTC, ciechowoj wrote:

 Is default dmd linker (on MS Windows, OPTILINK) supposed to 
 link against static libraries created with Visual Studio?

 Specifically I want to link a project compiled on windows with 
 dmd against pre-compiled library `libclang.lib` from LLVM 
 suite. I'm pretty sure they used Visual Studio to compile the 
 library.


No, because DMD win32 produces OMF objects (.lib are archived 
collection of objects) while VS will produce collection of COFF 
in the lib.
Aug 05 2016
prev sibling parent reply Kai Nacke <kai redstar.de> writes:
On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 18:28:48 UTC, ciechowoj wrote:

 Is default dmd linker (on MS Windows, OPTILINK) supposed to 
 link against static libraries created with Visual Studio?

 Specifically I want to link a project compiled on windows with 
 dmd against pre-compiled library `libclang.lib` from LLVM 
 suite. I'm pretty sure they used Visual Studio to compile the 
 library.


If you are already using Visual Studio and LLVM/clang then why 
not use ldc? The compiler itself is built with this toolchain...

Regards,
Kai
Aug 06 2016
parent ciechowoj <keepitsimplesirius gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 6 August 2016 at 12:06:02 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:

 If you are already using Visual Studio and LLVM/clang then why 
 not use ldc? The compiler itself is built with this toolchain...


I'm considering that option. However, as the project I want to 
compile is dstep, I want it to compile smoothly with dmd.

Any ideas about that strange liker error?
Aug 06 2016