[wpiutil] MSVC: Failed to load entry point

[ghost]

Describe the bug When compiling wpiutil with MSVC and launching an application linked to it, the following error window pops up.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Build wpiutil with CMake

2. Link the wpiutil dll to an application

   • Link to code: irrelevant?

Expected behavior The application should run without issue but has the error above

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 10

Additional context wpiutil was built with CMake.

[ghost]

This seems to be an issue caused by a lack of __declspec(dllexport) but it looks like WPIUtil contains this function in every relevant place unless I missed something.

[ghost]

Here's the relevant CMake commands. https://github.com/binex-dsk/QFRCDashboard/blob/arg/.github/workflows/build.yml#L200

Forgot to mention this is on a recent commit (with my protobuf CMake PR)

[Gold856]

Can you try building wpilib in debug mode? It says your app is built in debug mode, but you built wpilib in release mode. I used my cloned wpilib and built debug DLLs and it stopped complaining about the entrypoint, although I did hit another error from there.

[ghost]

Good catch! I completely forgot to change this option -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

[Gold856]

Remember that debug files have d for debug appended to the filename, so you'll also need to change the name in the workflow to match the filenames.

[ghost]

Yeah so far I've learned that MSVC is extremely stingy with debug/release files compared to gcc and clang.

Enabling debug builds gives me this error during CI though:

D:\a\..\allwpilib\wpiutil\src\main\native\cpp\Logger.cpp: fatal error C1041: cannot open program database 'D:\a\...\win-nt-build\wpiutil\CMakeFiles\wpiutil.dir\vc140.pdb'; if multiple CL.EXE write to the same .PDB file, please use /FS

Don't know why it's only on debug builds? Enabling /FS does nothing

[Gold856]

Maybe you need to change the target triplet?

[ghost]

I removed vcpkg entirely and that didn't help.

[Gold856]

I think what might be happening is MSVC is trying to access a non-existent .pdb file. My local build doesn't have a .pdb file at the location in the logs. Not sure how to fix it. Maybe try building with MSBuild? So remove -G "Ninja", and it should default back to MSBuild. I'm running out of ideas at this point. It could also be something weird with sccache, though I doubt it.

[Gold856]

You could also try doing a local build just to make sure that works.

[Gold856]

Alternatively, you could build everything in release mode, including the dashboard. That should mitigate the problem.

[ghost]

You could also try doing a local build just to make sure that works.

I'm not able to do a local build, because Windows sucks and the only computer I can even use Windows 10 on has an installation that is so utterly garbage and broken that compiling any application on it would be a miracle on the same level as the resurrection of Christ. Let alone compiling two libraries and a dashboard, installing Qt, and getting MSVC to even function. This operating system is so garbage I genuinely don't understand how every single person at my school besides me uses this piece of trash operating system.

Yet because of that, I'm forced to support this developer-hostile asinine piece of trash that can't even get its own installer to work properly, let alone even one aspect of their horrific operating system. If I don't support this garbage, I don't get a userbase. Period.

Anyways... Switched to MSBuild and ntcore does finally build (with an added /EHsc flag to MSVC), but install failed with:

CMake Error at win-nt-build/wpiutil/cmake_install.cmake:89 (file):
  file INSTALL cannot find
  "D:/a/QFRCDashboard/QFRCDashboard/win-nt-build/bin/Release/wpiutil.dll":
  File exists.

...why is it looking for a release library... in a DEBUG build? I EXPLICITLY tell this john to build in DEBUG mode and it's out here looking for NONEXISTENT RELEASE LIBRARIES. I hate Windows so much.

Anyways, switching to release mode keeps the issue. I am so done rn :/

[PeterJohnson]

I'm not sure how you're setting it to a DEBUG build, but I'm pretty sure CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is ignored with msbuild.

MSVC does require keeping debug and release builds separate--they're not ABI compatible.

I also doubt that wpilib's cmake install has ever been tested on Windows. It's definitely not a common combination for us.

[Gold856]

Well I do CMake installs all the time on Windows. It definitely works, which makes this particular problem weird, since I don’t know why it’s acting up like this.

[ghost]

but I'm pretty sure CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is ignored with msbuild.

Wonderful... How would I go about setting msbuild to debug mode with CMake? All I can find are passing arguments to msbuild directly which seems to be unsupported by CMake.

[ghost]

Nevermind, finally got this john to work. Thanks for the help @PeterJohnson @Gold856

(i had to specify --config ${{ inputs.build_type }} on the build stage