Mingw-w64 Unable to link version library

Question

For an open windows source-project to be built with Mingw-w64 I figured, it was nice, if the application was conscious of its version.

To get this, I copied/pastes/edited a small wrapper, which would read the version-information from the application’s own resources. This code builds well, when being done with Visual Studio environment (using vcvars32.bat).

However, when I try to build it with MinGw, the compiler runs through nicely, but the linker does not. There’s an error, that a functions from the version.dll is not found:

VersSample.cpp:(.text+0x14f): undefined reference to VerQueryValueW

I did add the –lversion compiler-switch in the build-command-line, but it appears, not to work. Anybody a hint, what I am missing?

The build-command looks as follows:

set PATH=C:\Tools\MinGw\mingw64\bin\;%PATH%
windres VersSample.rc -O coff -o VersSample.res
g++ -o VersSample.exe -mwindows -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -lversion VersSample.cpp VersSample.res

BTW: I did not want to make this bigger as needed, but if there's some nterest, I could post the whole function.

Answer 1

Gosh, I got it.
I can't tell why, but the postition of the -lversion seemed to be of importance. I placed it at the end of the g++ call, and it worked:

g++ -o VersSample.exe -mwindows -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ VersSample.cpp VersSample.res -lversion

For anyone interested, the whole function looks as follows:

void AddVersionInfo(WCHAR* pszwOutput, const WCHAR* pszwEntry) {
/** Variables: */
DWORD vLen, langD;
BOOL retVal;
LPVOID retbuf = NULL;
WCHAR fileEntry[256];
/** Fetch-Code: */
HRSRC hVersion = FindResource(NULL, MAKEINTRESOURCE(VS_VERSION_INFO), RT_VERSION);
if (hVersion != NULL) {
    HGLOBAL hGlobal = LoadResource(NULL, hVersion);
    if (hGlobal != NULL) {
        LPVOID versionInfo = LockResource(hGlobal);
        if (versionInfo != NULL) {
            swprintf(fileEntry, L"\\VarFileInfo\\Translation");
            retVal = VerQueryValue(versionInfo, fileEntry, &retbuf, (UINT *)&vLen);
            if (retVal && vLen == 4) {
                memcpy(&langD, retbuf, 4);
                #ifdef _MSC_VER
                swprintf(fileEntry, L"\\StringFileInfo\\%02X%02X%02X%02X\\%s",
                    (langD & 0xff00) >> 8, langD & 0xff, (langD & 0xff000000) >> 24,
                    (langD & 0xff0000) >> 16, pszwEntry);
                #else
                swprintf(fileEntry, L"\\StringFileInfo\\%02X%02X%02X%02X\\%S",
                    (langD & 0xff00) >> 8, langD & 0xff, (langD & 0xff000000) >> 24,
                    (langD & 0xff0000) >> 16, pszwEntry);
                #endif
            }else{
                swprintf(fileEntry, L"\\StringFileInfo\\%04X04B0\\%s",
                    GetUserDefaultLangID(), pszwEntry);
            }
            if (VerQueryValue(versionInfo, fileEntry, &retbuf, (UINT *)&vLen)) {
                wcscat(pszwOutput, (WCHAR*)retbuf);
            }
        }
    }
    UnlockResource(hGlobal);
    FreeResource(hGlobal);
}

}

Note, that I had to add a compiler-switch to distinguish between the MS VS and the MinGw environment, since they appear to handle markers in sprintf (resp. swprintf) differently.

With this, given that a complete VersionInfo block is in the ressources, the data can be accessed and used as:

AddVersionInfo(buffer, L"FileVersion");