CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linkerluastatic-libraries
Christopher Brown
Christopher Brown

Reputation: 177

Problems with linking lua statically

I'm trying to link lua statically into my C++ application with VS2012. I downloaded the vs11_lib files off of sourceforge and added linker dependencies for this file, lua52.lib. I'm now getting all sorts of link errors when I try to compile and I'm pretty sure I missed a step. Again, I'm doing this statically since I'd like my application to run stand-alone. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 6897

Answers (2)

Tom Blodget
Tom Blodget

Reputation: 20802

Lua sources can be compiled as C or C++. I figure the lib files you are trying to use are compiled as C and you are including their headers as C++. The outcome would be that the names of the functions are different; ergo, the linking errors.

If you are using a C lib in a C++ file, wrap the lib's header like so:

extern "C" {
    #include "lua.h"
    #include "lualib.h"
    #include "lauxlib.h"
}

For more detailed instructions using Lua with Visual Studio, see this article.

UPDATE:

As, @lhf says in a comment, the newer distributions of Lua provide a C++ header lua.hpp which does the same thing. It is described for older distributions in PIL.

Upvotes: 2

W.B.
W.B.

Reputation: 5525

The best way is to build embeddable Lua yourself. Download source files for your desired version, create a static library project in VS2012, copy the source files (*.h and *.c to the VS project, not VS solution) and add all source files to the project, except luac.c and lua.c, which are needed for standalone executable rather than embedded library (and they conflict with each other in one project anyway).

After that compile the release version and you got yourself lua5.x.lib that you can link against. If it's still not working, then the problem might be that you added linker dependencies in the wrong place.

Upvotes: 5

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