Build Succeeded, but no .lib file gets created

visual-studio visual-studio-2008 visual-c++
Jim picture Jim · Oct 16, 2010 · Viewed 59.8k times · Source

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 Code... Creating Library... Creating browse information file...", and at the end, it says the build succeeded. In the release/debug folder, it has a bunch of .obj files, but it doesn't have a .lib file. What could I be missing?

Thanks!

Answer

Steve Townsend picture Steve Townsend · Oct 16, 2010

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.

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