Importing libraries and including them still gives undefined references

[RekTekk249]

I'm quite new to c++ and Qt in general, so I might have made some obvious mistake here, but I spent the last couple hours trying to figure that out and still no luck. He're the code in question, from the bit7z library:

try {
        bit7z::Bit7zLibrary lib( L"7za.dll" );
        bit7z::BitExtractor extractor( lib, bit7z::BitFormat::Zip );
        //Trimming extension
        QString subDirectory = "sub/" +
                QString::fromStdString(fileName
                           .toStdString().substr(0,
                                       fileName.toStdString().find_last_of(".")));

        CreateDirectoryA(subDirectory.toLocal8Bit().data(), nullptr);
        extractor.extract(L"sub/" + fileName.toStdWString(), subDirectory.toStdWString());

    }catch (const bit7z::BitException& ex ) {
        qDebug() << ex.what();
    }

Getting undefined references on every instance of bit7z... I know the string manipulation are probably not good, but I'm used to python where everything "" is a string, while here you have char* char[] std::string QString wstring wchar* and such... Every function takes a different type of string and none of theses are compatible...
The .pro file:

...
...
DISTFILES +=

win32:CONFIG(release, debug|release): LIBS += -L$$PWD/bit7z/lib/ -lbit7z64
else:win32:CONFIG(debug, debug|release): LIBS += -L$$PWD/bit7z/lib/ -lbit7z64_d
else:unix: LIBS += -L$$PWD/bit7z/lib/ -lbit7z64

INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD/bit7z/include
DEPENDPATH += $$PWD/bit7z/include

What am I missing here? I don't see any error in the IDE until compilation. I've added the library with the "Add library" option when you right click and "external library".

[Christian Ehrlicher]

So what error do you get? Since it's a C++ library - is Qt and the library compiled with the same compiler? You can't mix msvc and mingw here.

[aha_1980]

Hi @RekTekk249,

Just one addition to @Christian-Ehrlicher: Your program needs the same archticture (bitness) as your library, please check that too.

Regarding the second point: indeed string handling is horrible in C and only partly better in C++; but with QString you have a mighty and locale aware toolbox.

   QString subDirectory = "sub/" +
            QString::fromStdString(fileName
                       .toStdString().substr(0,
                                   fileName.toStdString().find_last_of(".")));

So this can be done better (uncompiled + untested):

const QString subDirectory = "sub/" + fileName.mid(0, fileName.lastIndexOf('.'));

CreateDirectoryA(subDirectory.toLocal8Bit().data(), nullptr);

Note that is is platform specific (Windows) API and only works for ASCII filenames. A bit better would be:

CreateDirectoryW(reinterpret_cast<const wchar_t *>(subDirectory.utf16()), nullptr);

extractor.extract(L"sub/" + fileName.toStdWString(), subDirectory.toStdWString());

And here it depends on which parameters extract() expects.

Hope that helps.

Regards

[SGaist]

Hi,

To add to @aha_1980 additions, QDir has QDir::mkdir which is cross-platform so you don't have to play with native API for that kind of action.

[RekTekk249]

Yes, thanks for that, I wasn't aware that compilers weren't compatible... The library is open source, I'll just recompile it. Also, I heard of Qt::mkdir, but apparently it's doesn't have good performances, but I got this from a year old SO thread, it might have been better now.. I'll give it a try. I know CreateDirectoryW is a windows api function, but it was the simplest to use, and I had my fileName filtered with regex to be letters/numbers only for other reasons. For the strings, I was totally unaware of the QString.mid() function... I was looking on the docs for sub subs sub_str substring and stuff like that.. Thanks for that, I got it working now! That's the first time I encounter a language with multiple compilers like that... C and its variants seem to be the only one. Honestly though it feels like Qt is it's own language, more than a framework...

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@RekTekk249 said in Importing libraries and including them still gives undefined references:

Also, I heard of Qt::mkdir, but apparently it's doesn't have good performances

micro-optimization - you call it once... it's just not worth the trouble.