undefined reference to vtable for ...

Dr Deo picture Dr Deo · Mar 9, 2012 · Viewed 33.3k times · Source

I am trying to write an Http proxy that basically works like indianwebproxy

So i fired up qtcreator and but one of my classes is failing to compile with the infamous error : undefined reference to vtable for HttpProxyThreadBrowser. I can't figure out why its doing this. I read through similar questions on Stackoverflow and apparently the problem is with undefined virtual methods that are not pure But i have not declared any virtual functions. Here is my class

class HttpProxyThreadBrowser : public QThread
{
public:
    HttpProxyThreadBrowser(QTcpSocket outgoingSocket,QTcpSocket  browserSocket,QObject *parent = 0);
    ~HttpProxyThreadBrowser(){};
    void run();

private:
    QTcpSocket outgoingSocket;
    QTcpSocket browserSocket;

};

And I define the class here in pastebin so as not to bore you. Unfortunately i cant find out why the vtable is undefined. Please assist.

httpproxythreadbrowser.cpp:5: undefined reference to `vtable for HttpProxyThreadBrowser
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Answer

Simon Richter picture Simon Richter · Mar 9, 2012

The destructor is implicitly virtual because a base class has a virtual d'tor.

The GNU compiler emits the vtable along with the first non-inline virtual method ("key method"). As your d'tor is defined inside the class, it is implicitly virtual, and as there are no other virtual methods, you don't have a key method.

There is no use case where a concrete class would have only virtual inline methods, as they can be inlined only into derived classes.

I'd move the definition of the dtor to the implementation file.

I'm not sure whether you need to use moc here as well, or if QThread derivatives work without (IIRC you need it only for Qt's cast operators, and for signals/slots).