GenerateLibFromDll

2011-03-26T00:38:40Z

ColonelK: Suggested an automatic method to generate the DEF file

from: [http://www.coderetard.com/2009/01/21/generate-a-lib-from-a-dll-with-visual-studio/ http://www.coderetard.com/2009/01/21/generate-a-lib-from-a-dll-with-visual-studio/]

== Introduction ==

To avoid installing and fighting against MSYS and Cygwin, you can just extract
exported symbols from libvlc.dll to generate a .lib (libvlc.lib) and link your program against it.
And all of this using only with Microsoft Visual Studio Tools!

In case you don't have Visual Studio you can download the free version here [http://www.microsoft.com/express/download Visual Studio Express].

== Open a Command Prompt ==

It can be found within the Visual Studio Tools menu entry: Start / Program Files / Microsoft Visual Studio / Visual Studio Tools / Visual Studio Command Prompt.

== Extract Symbols ==

Within the command prompt type:

dumpbin /exports "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\libvlc.dll" > "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\libvlc.def"

Edit the libvlc.def file and modify it to get something like this:

EXPORTS
libvlc_add_intf
libvlc_audio_get_channel
libvlc_audio_get_mute
libvlc_audio_get_track
libvlc_audio_get_track_count
libvlc_audio_get_track_description
libvlc_audio_get_volume
...

Alternatively, the following command will automatically generate the DEF file:

echo EXPORTS > libvlc.def
for /f "usebackq tokens=4,* delims=_ " %i in (`dumpbin /exports "c:\Program Files\VideoLan\VLC\libvlc.dll"`) do if %i==libvlc echo %i_%j >> libvlc.def

== Generate the .lib ==

Still within the command prompt type:

lib /def:"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\libvlc.def" /out:"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\libvlc.lib" /machine:x86

Of course, you'll need to adapt the path according to your configuration.

Et voila! You have it, now you can link against libvlc.lib in your program <nowiki>:-)</nowiki>

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GenerateLibFromDll