Can't reference a library project (DLL) because .lib file is missing
c++, dll, reference, visual-c++, visual-studio
Solution
Many DLLs comes with corresponding LIB libraries, that are only needed at linking stage. So basically there are 2 types of LIB libraries:
Real static library that contains all the object files
Library with only definitions for the linker, this kind of libraries comes with DLLs
So basically you need to link this LIB file in order to be able to work with DLL
Problem
I'm trying to start a C++ game engine project. I don't have much knowledge of dll's and lib's but figured the engine itself would be a dll and I would have separate dll projects such as renderer, input, etc that would be used by the engine and the engine dll would be used by the game. I seem to have the engine project referenced fine in the demo.exe project(by adding a reference and adding the path to additional include directories) but when trying to add a reference to a renderer dll project in the engine dll project I'm getting: error LNK1104: cannot open file 'MyPath\Renderer.lib' MyPath\LINK Engine Why is it mentioning libs?