Visual Studio 2012 - error LNK1104: cannot open file 'glew32.lib'

Question

I am having issues compiling a basic openGL program on VS 2012. I get a build error upon compiltation giving me:

1>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'glew32.lib'

I followed the instructions given to me by the documentation for GLEW.

In your OpenGL project open Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies -> add glew32.lib.

Also you must include #include in your sources; For that add path to your glew folder: Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properies -> General -> VC++ Directories -> Include Directories and Library Directories;

C/C++ Tab -> General -> Additional Include Directories - Add lib folder there

I have also added the glew32.dll onto my Debug folder within my project folder along with the executable. So far I keep getting this error.

If you need any more further clarification of the steps I have done please don't hesitate to ask

Palestra

I don't know how to format the quote - if a moderator can fix this for me – Palestra

What happens if you temporarily copy .lib file to some existing valid directory, like $(WindowsSdkDir)\lib? – Ulna

Do you have glew32.lib? – Gstring

I am astonished what drove the original author to claim a mandatory step to be OPTIONAL. This is required. – Changchangaris

Don't put glew32.dll in your Debug folder. MSVC is setup to run your applications in your project/solution's root directory by default when you run it through the integrated debugger/execution command. If you put a single copy of all of your dependency DLLs there, then you do not have to put redundant copies in each of the build configuration directories (e.g. Release, Debug, MyCustomBuildConfig). – Junior

@Gstring yes. Why would you ask that? – Palestra

@AndonM.Coleman I did that as a solution to the already existing problem. It may help but without it the problem is still the same – Palestra

Glew32.lib is not part of the Windows SDK, you need to supply it yourself. Type "glew32.lib" in a google query and take the first hit. – Orwin

Linker Tools Error LNK1104 lists a number of possible causes. Can you eliminate all of them? – Changchangaris

@HansPassant I got the OpenGL SDK – Palestra

@Changchangaris after some thought looking at all those options the only potential issue could be: "Another program may have the file open and the linker cannot write to it" – Palestra

Well, don't make us or the linker guess at where you put it. Add it to the linker's General + Additional Library Directories setting. – Orwin

possible duplicate of Visual Studio error: LNK1104: cannot open file 'kernel32.lib' - only in WP8 projects / Win32 builds – Scupper

This worked for me :D Pan.student's reply to Edward83! #16978918 – Rampant

Answer 1

In all honesty, there is no real benefit to using the DLL version of glew (short of reduced executable size, but this hardly matters on modern Windows PCs).

It is not like you can simply drop a new version of the DLL into your application and use extensions that you never used before. Likewise, bug fixes are so infrequent/unnecessary with a library that basically just parses the extension spec. files that using the DLL as a means of fixing extension loading bugs in shipped software is also not practical. Statically linking to glew (this means glew32s.lib) makes much more sense in the long run.

The static linking library is also more portable on Windows, it will work with MSVC and MinGW (whereas the DLL library only works with MSVC). Link against glew32s and put that in whatever directory you decided to use for additional library dependencies.

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Here is a sample solution configuration for a project I wrote that uses glew. I have established a convention for this particular software where compile-time dependencies are stored under platform/<Subsystem>. Thus, I have glew32s.lib (32-bit) and glew64s.lib (64-bit) in ./Epsilon/platform/OpenGL/glew{32|64}s.lib

  

Junior

I only have glew32 (without the s) within GLEW 1.10 package. Can you elaborate when you mean "Statically" linking to GLEW? – Palestra

@BDillan: There are two versions of GLEW. There is the DLL (dynamic) version and then there is the one that is completely built-in to your software when you compile/link it (static). I always compile glew from source, but the binary archive here contains both the dynamic and static libraries under: lib/Release/Win32 (32-bit) and lib/Release/x64 (64-bit). It uses the name glew32 for both Win32 and x64, for my software I actually renamed the 64-bit version as you can see in the diagram I listed. – Junior

Answer 2

Steps to Use Classes form another project (Add header and solver linker errors)

1. To be able to add the header from another project, first go to "Properties > c++ > General > Additional Include Directories" and add the directory that contains the header. Now you will be able to add the header of the class from the other project, but running the project will still cause Linker Errors.

2. Add __declspec(dllexport) before the class you are using for the other project. This can be added in the header file of that class. This should be added right before the function or variable or class name. Now you will get a lib file. (if placed in wrong place, you can get this warning: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/eehkcz60.aspx)

3. "Properties > Linker > Additional Library Directories". Specify the location of the lib file that is generated.

4. "Properties > Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies”: Add the name of the lib file.

Trenatrenail

Answer 3

This sounds like the library has been specified as a dependency, but the linker/additional search path(s) has not been set to include the directory where the library is located.

This may help.

Pelvis

Answer 4

It happened to me under this situation, I clean the solution and build it again, then many errors like LNK1104 occur.

After trying to restart IIS, I build solution successfully without LNK1104 errors. I do not know why, but restarting IIS takes much more time than normal, so I guess something is used by other IIS worker process.

Just give a shot to see if this magic happens on you.

Bothersome

Answer 5

This question is old and marked solved, but I had a similar problem symptoms with a completely different solution. So just in case anyone else stumbles in here:
It appeared that because I had 2 projects under one solution (a dll and an exe), the building order was mixed (from the output window):

1> Rebuilding project1..
2> Rebuilding project1..
1> file1.cpp
2> file1.cpp

and so on. By the message you copied, it appears you too have more than one project under one solution. One project was looking for the *.lib file that the other build hadn't created yet.
Solution:
Right click on "main" project -> Build Dependencies -> Project Dependencies.. -> Mark which project the main one depends on.

Hannis