#Build windows makefiles cmake linux how to
#Build windows makefiles cmake linux portable
#Build windows makefiles cmake linux windows

This means when we build the library, our functions are exported and when we want to use our library, the functions are imported from the dll. linking it to main.exe), shared_EXPORTS is not defined, and SHARED_EXPORT is set to _declspec(dllimport). G++ -shared -o shared.dll shared.o -Wl,-out-implib,libshared_dll.lib We can create the DLL and its corresponding import library with MinGW(( Creating import libraries with MinGW)): In contrast to static libraries, they do not contain the complete function definitions, but just “stubs” of the exported symbols of the DLL to satisfy the linker and to load the DLL at runtime. Import libraries are similar to static libraries and usually also have a. If an executable wants to use functions of a DLL it does not link the DLL directly but it’s import library. On Windows, a DLL usually has a matching so called “import library”.

#Build windows makefiles cmake linux windows

But this is not the common way to work with shared libraries on windows because just a few compilers support this - the Microsoft Visual Studio Compiler is not among them. Like shown above, it is perfectly fine to directly link the DLL if the DLL was also created by MinGW. The above lines produce shared.dll and main.exe that links directly against shared.dll. G++ -fPIC -shared -o shared.dll shared.cpp

Our application is implemented in main.cpp, where we want to use our shared library: The header of our shared library is shared.h and its implementation is in shared.cpp. Let’s start building our demo on Linux with GCC.

#Build windows makefiles cmake linux portable

The final version of the minimalistic portable code demo, that is gradually developed in this post, is available on github. Last but not least, a few words about the interoperability of libraries created with different compilers (ABI compatibility) follow. To make the build process more convenient and more flexible, we use CMake at this point. We go on by building our minimal demo application with other compilers, like the Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler (MSVC) and clang/LLVM. I give a brief explanation what an import library is and when it ’s needed. Then, we also build and use a so-called import library - we have to consider some platform/compiler specifics at this point. At first by directly linking the dynamic link library. Then we build the same code on Windows with MinGW. We take a look at the necessary gcc options for compiling and linking and check at the exported symbols of the. 1Īt first we create and use a minimal shared library on Linux with GCC. The windows equivalent is the “ dynamic link library” usually with file extension. “A shared library or shared object is a file that is shared by executable files and further shared objects files.” A shared library on Linux is called “ dynamically linked shared object”, and has the file extension.

#Build windows makefiles cmake linux how to

In this article I focus on shared libraries and give a practical overview on how to create and use shared libraries with various compilers on various operating systems, with the goal of portable source code and a unified build process. If you want to make your C/C++ project portable between operating systems and compilers, there are some things to consider.

Interoperability of Libraries (ABI compatibility).

Creating and linking the import library.