Program with protocol-buffers don't compile with MinGW-w64: “undefined reference to google::protobuf:: …”

Question

I have installed the libprotobuf-dev=2.6.0-4 and protobuf-compiler=2.6.0-4 packages from Debian Jessie repository. Now I'm trying to compile a program that use the 'addressbook.proto' file from the Google Developers example with the MinGW-w64 compiler. I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

With this command the program works:

$ g++ main.cpp addressbook.pb.cc -lprotobuf

But I want to compile for Windows too.

I added the symlink: /usr/include/google -> /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/include/google.

$ i686-w64-mingw32-g++ main.cpp addressbook.pb.cc -lprotobuf
/usr/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-ld: cannot find -lprotobuf
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

With the library location still not working:

$ i686-w64-mingw32-g++ -L /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/ main.cpp addressbook.pb.cc -lprotobuf
/tmp/ccB1VJyR.o:main.cpp:(.text$_ZN6google8protobuf8internal27GetEmptyStringAlreadyInitedEv[__ZN6google8protobuf8internal27GetEmptyStringAlreadyInitedEv]+0x7): undefined reference to `google::protobuf::internal::empty_string_'
/tmp/ccB1VJyR.o:main.cpp:(.text$_ZN6google8protobuf8internal27GetEmptyStringAlreadyInitedEv[__ZN6google8protobuf8internal27GetEmptyStringAlreadyInitedEv]+0x2f): undefined reference to `google::protobuf::internal::empty_string_'
/tmp/ccPz4uiI.o:addressbook.pb.cc:(.text+0x78): undefined reference to `google::protobuf::DescriptorPool::generated_pool()'
/tmp/ccPz4uiI.o:addressbook.pb.cc:(.text+0x87): undefined reference to `google::protobuf::DescriptorPool::FindFileByName(std::string const&) const'
...

Answer 1

libprotobuf-dev contains library headers and pre-built binaries for your system. If you are cross-compiling you need to compile library from sources to target system as well. Something like "./configure CC=i686-w64-mingw32-g++" in library sources directory should do the job.