Forcing symbol export with MSVC

Question

I have a application and several plugins in DLL files. The plugins use symbols from the application via a export library. The application links in several static libraries a

Answer 1

The /INCLUDE directive can be used to force the MSVC linker to include a symbol. Alternatively, /OPT:NOREF can be used to disable removal of unused symbols in general.

A common approach is to create a single unused function that references all objects exported for your plugins. Then you only need a single /INCLUDE directive for that function.