Build Succeeded, but no .lib file gets created

Question

I inherited a substantial amount of code, including a visual studio project that is supposed to (as best as I can tell) build a .lib file. Visual studio says \"... Generating C

Answer 1

Open the Project Properties (right-click the project in Solution Explorer, select 'Properties'). Under 'Librarian', check 'Output File' - that's where the output should go.

If this looks right, try dir /s *.lib in a suitable subdirectory for your project, to see if you can locate the output library by date and time. If you still can't find it, try a clean rebuild (right click project, select 'Rebuild').

For DLLs, a .Lib file is not created if the DLL exports nothing for external usage. I don't think this applies for static lib builds but I would make sure you are exporting something public from your library project source code.

Answer 2

I just ran across this problem as well.

It was due to using an invalid macro in the output directory definition. In my case, it was

when it should have been

I had to blank out the full path in the second screen shot. I had an incorrect macro. I was using MsBuildProjectDir when I should have been using MsBuildProjectDirectory. The read-only text box will show the full path (eg: C:\Development\blah\blah\blah\) when the output directory is valid. If the output directory is not valid, you'll get something like the first screenshot.

Answer 3

My static library contains nothing but two template classes, so I didn't have a .cpp file. This caused Visual Studio 2015 to not output a .lib file. To solve this, I made a file huh.cpp which includes all of the headers.

Answer 4

If the Methods you want to export are in a class, you have to __declspec(dllexport) on the class. Otherwise no .lib will be created.

Answer 5

.lib will not get generated if you miss to add prefix __declspec(dllexport) for methods.

Answer 6

In the DLL project, put __declspec(dllexport) beginnings of methods defined in .h and .cpp files.

After all, compile your dll again, so .lib file will be generated and ready for linking.

put Class Foo
{
public:
    __declspec(dllexport) int GetFoo() const;