Linking with DevC++

Usually the -l flags refer to lib*.a files, you should use -lopengl32 for OpenGL.

lib*.a files are library files (either static or referencing a dll), the equivalent to *.lib files for VC++, .o files are object files, the equivalent to .obj in VC++.

Hope that helps.

Oh, thanks!

That's why I never managed to link stuff, I was linking to the ".lib" (VC++) things instead of the ".a" (GCC)!

So the ".a" files are different from the ".lib", but are the "dll"s for VC++ and GCC different or not?

Quote:

Original post by The Najdorf Oh, thanks! That's why I never managed to link stuff, I was linking to the ".lib" (VC++) things instead of the ".a" (GCC)! So the ".a" files are different from the ".lib", but are the "dll"s for VC++ and GCC different or not?

No, they're not different, they have the same structure, however, because of the function overloading feature of C++, the way objects work, and the lack of a standard in this particular, different compilers mangle C++ function names differently, for example, lets say you have a function void foo(int), one compiler might mangle it and name it as void_foo_int where other would mangle it as int_foo_void, when you try to compile a program against a dll which was compiled on a different compiler, it will not be able to find the symbol void_foo_int, because its set as int_foo_void on the DLL.

The issue is not trivial, you cannot just make dummy libraries with aliases to the correct function names, because internally one compiler is likelly to handle objects different from another, the solution is to stick to C APIs, using extern "C" for the functions you want to expose in the case where cross compiler compatibility is desired, or you could use something like COM or CORBA.