Link against a 3rd-party library with Visual Studio

Question

I\'m trying to create a .dll with Visual Studios 2013. The project includes libpq functionality.

Per other stackoverflow posts, and other sources I\'ve found on the

Answer 1

I've successfully compiled the sample program by setting these project properties:

• Add <pgsql install path>\include and \lib to VC++ Directories->Include and ->Library, correspondingly
• Add libpq.lib to Linker->Input->Additional dependencies

This is the standard way to reference 3rd-party libs. It's just that they recommend using environment variables for their "base dirs" to avoid patching the project when it's under a VCS.

• To be able to run the app from VS (both with and without debugging), I also specified PATH=%PATH%;<pgsql install path>\bin in Debugging->Environment since this dir isn't in PATH on my system.

Answer 2

It's not sufficient add the postgres lib directory to the project, you must also add reference to libpq.lib. Just add this line to one of your source .cpp files:

#pragma comment(lib, "libpq.lib")

As noted by Marco A. the library must match a program bitness (32 or 64 bit): if you build 32-bit DLL (referred as Win32) you must use 32 bit library; if 64-bit (x64) - 64-bit library.

Answer 3

I have also faced same issue. Then I realized that I was building my application as a 32bit. I changed the target of my application to x64 and it compiled successfully