VS2010 static linking issue

Question

my company has recently upgraded from VS2005 to VS2010. We have a huge project which uses a lot of modules which are being linked statically into the exe. But there seem to

Answer 1

You are pretty lost in that dialog if you are tinkering with Framework and References, those are settings that only apply to managed code. The term "reference" only applies to .NET assemblies. The linker doesn't support storing compiled managed code in a .lib. I'll work from the assumption that you actually are changing linker settings. If you make a change in library D then you also have to change its header file. Which in itself will be enough to get B and C rebuilt since one or more of their source code files should #include that header.

The only thing that Link Library Dependencies does is automatically make a .lib a dependency, same thing as Linker + Input, Additional Dependency setting. That however requires you to explicitly set the project dependencies. Right-click the B project, click Project Dependencies and tick D. Repeat for C. Repeat for A and tick B and C. Repeat for EXE and tick A.

This is rarely what you want, it makes the D library embedded into the B and C libraries. And B and C get embedded in A. The EXE now only has a dependency on A. It works, but it makes the .lib files unnecessarily beefy. And you have the problem you describe if you don't set the project dependencies properly, a rebuild of D doesn't cause it B and C to be relinked.

What you should do is not set dependencies between the .libs, they don't have any. Each can be built without the other .libs being present. A .lib is nothing but a bag of .obj files. All that's required is that you make all 4 .lib projects dependencies of the EXE project. That makes sure that they are built before the linker tries to link the EXE.