Compile and link 3rd party library in Visual Studio

Question

I am fairly new to C programming and I haven't used Visual Studio or a third party library before. I'm trying to do something simple with FMOD and need to link fmodvclib, fmod.h, and of course fmod.dll.

I've put fmodex_vc.lib in the additional dependencies and the path to the low level libraries in the include and library directories as well as additional include libraries but when I build it gives me:

"cannot open source file "fmod.h"
identifier "FSOUND_SAMPLE" is undefined
Cannot open include file: 'fmod.h': No such file or directory

but even weirder is:

cannot open source file "stdio.h"

here is the code:

#include "fmod.h"
#include <stdio.h>

FSOUND_SAMPLE* handle;

int main(void)
{
    int input;

    FSOUND_Init(44100, 32, 0);

    handle = FSOUND_Sample_Load(0, "test.ogg", 0, 0, 0);
    FSOUND_PlaySound(0, handle);

    while (input != 0)
    {
        scanf_s("&d", &input);
    }

    FSOUND_Sample_Free(handle);
    FSOUND_Close();
}

Any help would be appreciated!

When you add the path of header files to INCLUDE_PATH, you must use #include instead of #include "filename". double qoutations must be used for header files that are in the project directory. — payman, Jan 26 '16 at 07:24
Possible duplicate of [How to add additional libraries to Visual Studio project?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/4445418/608639), [Compiling and linking third party libraries in VS 2015](https://stackoverflow.com/q/31030556/608639), etc. — jww, Mar 02 '19 at 06:48

score 29 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 26 '16 at 10:19

To link against third party libraries you usually have to do 3 things:

1. You have to add the Include Directory.

In Project > Properties > C/C++->General > Additional Include Directories

Click Edit, and enter the path to the directory where the file "fmod.h" is located.

2. You have to link against the *.lib file.

In Project > Properties > Linker > General > Additional Library Directories, click Edit and enter the path to your library files.

In Project > Properties > Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies, click Edit, add the filename of the library you want to link against (in this case this would be most likely "fmodvc.lib")

3. You have to provide the *.dll in your project directory

That your programm will run successfully it has to find the *.dll file at runtime. You can either place it in a folder referenced by the PATH variable, or in the PWD of your process. This would be right beside your *.vcxproj files.

If you are linking statically you can skip step 3, if you are loading the dll file dynamically you can skip step 2.

Thanks for this nice answer. Is there a way in VS2017 to add a runtime directory in the project options to find dlls ? Something like `./bin` or an entirely different directory such as `C:/SomeSDK/bin` ? Basically to avoid copying all dlls. Thanks. — PinkTurtle, May 26 '18 at 08:49

Compile and link 3rd party library in Visual Studio

1 Answers1

Linked