Visual Studio C++ remote linux debugging add linke

Question

I am trying to develop a simple program in C++ with the boost library. I develop with Visual Studio 2017 and a remote bash shell of ubuntu to compile and debug.

I installed gdb, gdbserver, all the compiler and the boost library on ubuntu.

Simple programs without boost compile and run without problem from the shell directly as from Visual Studio !

When I compile the following program directly from the ubuntu bash with the following command : g++ test.cpp -std=c++11 -lboost_program_options -o t It compiles and runs also!

#include <boost/program_options.hpp>
#include <iostream>

using namespace boost::program_options;

int main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
    try
    {
        options_description desc{ "Options" };
        desc.add_options()
            ("help,h", "Help screen");

        variables_map vm;
        store(parse_command_line(argc, argv, desc), vm);
        notify(vm);

        if (vm.count("help"))
            std::cout << desc << '\n';

    }
    catch (const error &ex)
    {
        std::cerr << ex.what() << '\n';
    }
}

But if I put the same code in Visual Studio in a file and try to compile remotely it doesn't work :

1>------ Build started: Project: ACO-PPS, Configuration: Debug x64 ------
1>Validating architecture
1>Validating sources
1>Copying sources remotely to 'localhost'
1>Starting remote build
1>Compiling sources:
1>main.cpp
1>Linking objects
1>/home/marius/projects/ACO-PPS/obj/x64/Debug/main.o : In the function main :
1>/home/marius/projects/ACO-PPS/main.cpp:11 : undefined reference to « boost::program_options::options_description::m_default_line_length »

and so on ...

In the project properties I have included -lboost_program_options under : Configuration Properties > C/C++ > All Options > Additional Options and under : Configuration Properties > Linker > All Options > Additional Options

What am I doing wrong ?

Answer 1

Below are the rules used by VCLinux for specifying libraries to GCC - from Ion Todirel (MSFT) in an answer on the VCLinux GitHub site.

You will see that ...Additional Options puts the library before the object files and hence the linker won't look in the library for dependencies. I'd recommend using Linker - Input - Library Dependencies and specify the library name, boost_program_options without the -l .

• Linker - General - Additional Library Directories - this adds paths with -L to the linker command line near the beginning of the command line.

• Linker - Input - Library Dependencies - this adds the file names with -l at the very end of the linker command line

• Linker - Input - Additional Dependencies - this adds the entries verbatim after the object files, and before the Linker - Input - Library Dependencies

• Linker - Command Line - Additional Options - this adds the entries verbatim before the object files in the linker command line

Note that the library name given in Linker - Input - Library Dependencies is passed to gcc as a -l command line option; i.e. it should not have the lib prefix or an extension. For example, libcairo.so should appear in Linker - Input - Library Dependencies as cairo. On the Linux remote, gcc will search along the path(s) specified in Linker - General - Additional Library Directories and the default system library search paths looking first for libcairo.so (dynamically linked, or shared, library) then libcairo.a (statically linked library).

If you have both shared and static libraries on your system, the shared library will be used preferrentially. If you want force linking of the static library see Telling gcc directly to link a library statically.