INFO: Caveats for Using Empty Top-Level Projects in Dev. Studio

ID: Q142594

The information in this article applies to:

The Development Environment, used with:
- Microsoft Visual C++, 32-bit Editions, versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 6.0

SUMMARY

This article discusses the process needed to set up a project workspace such that it builds multiple targets that are related. You might want to do this if, for example, you want to set up a workspace to build several related .exe files, and .dll files that they can call. This scenario is described in the Visual C++ User's Guide online documentation in the "Empty Top-Level Project with Multiple Subprojects" section.

The section of the documentation includes a sample scenario where an empty top-level project has two subprojects that build .exe files, and one of the .exe projects has a subproject that builds a DLL. The description of this scenario implies that in general you can set up a top-level project that has no source files, and it implies that the type of the top-level project and the subprojects involved are unimportant; they can be any type. This is not the case. The types of the projects and subprojects involved are important.

MORE INFORMATION

In certain scenarios, you get the following messages in the output window when you set the default project configuration to the empty top-level project in order to build all the subprojects:

LINK : warning LNK4001: no object files specified; libraries used
LINK : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _mainCRTStartup
fatal error LNK1120: 1 unresolved externals
Error executing link.exe.

This happens if you have one or more static library or DLL projects that are immediate subprojects of the empty top-level project. Or, if the top-level project is a DLL and the subproject is a resource-only DLL, the following error will appear:

Fatal Error C1001 Internal Compiler Error Compiler File MSC1.CPP Line 1786

Developer Studio invokes the linker to build an output file for the top-level project and automatically tries to link with the library files built by the subprojects (DLL subprojects create import libraries). This behavior occurs even if the top-level project is empty, meaning that it does not include source files.

If you want to set up a project workspace where the static library or DLL projects are immediate subprojects of an empty top-level project, you need to make the top-level project type be Makefile. In addition, you need to change the build settings for the Makefile project so the Build command line setting is blank. In other words, you do not want Developer Studio to invoke any command for the empty top-level project. This allows you to set up the correct dependency relationship between the top-level project and its subprojects, and it prevents Developer Studio from attempting to create an output file for the top-level project.

With Visual C++ 5.0 where the DLL projects are immediate subprojects of an empty top-level project, you can select the Ignore export library check box in the project settings for the DLL subprojects, Link tab, General category. This tells the build system not to automatically link the empty top-level project with the import library generated by the DLL subprojects. This check box is not available for static libraries.

Additional query words: checkbox

Keywords : kbide kbVC400 kbVC410 kbVC420 kbVC500 kbVC600 kbGrpDSTools
Version : winnt:
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbinfo