Troubles setting up Curl

RaJiska

Hello' People,

I'm quite new to Qt Creator, and have many troubles with something that seemed to be simple at first.
What I would like to do is to setup cURL on Qt Creator in order to be able to compile programs using it.

To proceed I downloaded cURL from here, choosing the 'libcurl' package (also tried with 'libcurl developement'), without success.
Each time I was linking it to my project, I'd get errors such as 'curl.lib missing', but I no such file anywhere (only curl.a).
On compilation also sometimes had issues such as 'unresolved external symbol' (about 280 of these errors at once).
The issue seems to appear upon this line: 'curl = curl_easy_init();'.

Here is the .pro file I am currently using:

QT += core gui widgets

greaterThan(QT_MAJOR_VERSION, 4): QT += widgets

TARGET = Launcher
TEMPLATE = app

QMAKE_LFLAGS += /INCREMENTAL:NO

SOURCES += main.cpp
mainwindow.cpp

HEADERS += mainwindow.h

FORMS += mainwindow.ui

INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD/../../../curl-7.40.0-devel-mingw32/include
DEPENDPATH += $$PWD/../../../curl-7.40.0-devel-mingw32/include
win32-g++: PRE_TARGETDEPS += $$PWD/../../../curl-7.40.0-devel-mingw32/lib/libcurl.a

How could I manage to get it linked correctly ?
Thank you very much for your help.

Chris Kawa

Hi, welcome to devnet.

Instead of the PRE_TARGETDEPS you need to add it to the LIBS variable like so:

LIBS += -L$PWD/../../../curl-7.40.0-devel-mingw32/lib -lcurl

Notice -L in front of the directory, than a space, -l(lowercase L), name of the library without the "lib" prefix and extension.
Make sure curl is built using the exact same version of the compiler you're using for your own project.

RaJiska

Hello, thank you for your answer,

I took another version of cURL that I compiled with VC12, I then took the file called 'libcurl.lib' and linked it in the .pro file as you suggested:

LIBS+= -L"C:\Users\Banzai\Desktop\C++\QtPgrm\build-QtPgrm-Desktop_Qt_5_4_2_MSVC2010_OpenGL_32bit-Debug\includes" -llibcurl

Here is what I get when using 'curl_easy_init();' or any other 'curl_easy*':

error: LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp_curl_easy_init referenced in function "public: __cdecl MainWindow::MainWindow(class QWidget *)" (??0MainWindow@@QEAA@PEAVQWidget@@@Z)

And yes, it uses the same compiler. Thanks.

Chris Kawa

As I said earlier - skip the lib prefix, i.e. -lcurl not -llibcurl. The linker adds the prefix automatically.

RaJiska

Oh ok, my apologies.

Just tried it, however, it doesn't seem to look for the right file.
Here is the error message Qt threw back:

LNK1181: cannot open input file 'curl.lib'

The folder in question contains:

curl → directory
libcurl.lib → file

Also tried to rename 'libcurl.lib' to 'curl.lib', and this time, the same error as the one given in my last post appears.

Thanks for your help.

Chris Kawa

Ah, just spotted another problem - you're using \ in your path. That's an escape sequence. Either change that to / or \\.
-lcurl is ok, so:

LIBS += -LC:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/build-QtPgrm-Desktop_Qt_5_4_2_MSVC2010_OpenGL_32bit-Debug/includes -lcurl

RaJiska

Thanks for your help,

However, it sticks to the same issue (cannot open input file).
Here is my whole .pro file in case it might be of any help:

#-------------------------------------------------

Project created by QtCreator 2015-07-16T18:24:19

#-------------------------------------------------

QT += core gui widgets

greaterThan(QT_MAJOR_VERSION, 4): QT += widgets

TARGET = QtPgrm
TEMPLATE = app

QMAKE_LFLAGS += /INCREMENTAL:NO

SOURCES += main.cpp
mainwindow.cpp

HEADERS += mainwindow.h

FORMS += mainwindow.ui

LIBS+= -L"C:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/build-QtPgrm-Desktop_Qt_5_4_2_MSVC2010_OpenGL_32bit-Debug/includes" -lcurl

Thank you very much.

Chris Kawa

Are you sure you've got the path correctly? It's unusual that a .lib file would be placed in '.../includes' directory.
Oh, and after you make any kind of changes in the .pro file be sure to re-run qmake: Build->Run qmake.

RaJiska

Yes, I am pretty sure it's in the right directory.
Have made several tests to ensure the path is correct,
by modifying the -lcurl at the end, here is what I got:

-lcurl → LNK1181: cannot open input file 'libcurll.lib' (the one you advised me)
-llibcurl → LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp_curl_easy_init referenced in function "public: __cdecl MainWindow::MainWindow(class QWidget *)" (??0MainWindow@@QEAA@PEAVQWidget@@@Z) (the one I used)
-llibcurlaa → LNK1181: cannot open input file 'libcurlaa.lib' (it was to see the behavior when searching for known inexisting lib, which is pretty similar to the first case)

Thank you.

EDIT: And yes, every modifications made in the .pro file is followed by a Run QMake.

Chris Kawa

Sorry, I mistook something. It's the MinGw linker that adds the 'lib' prefix, but you're using VS2010 so it indeed should be -llibcurl, not -lcurl. My bad.

So it seems the lib is linked but it does not contain the symbol. You can verify this by running from command line dumpbin.exe /exports your/path/to/libcurl.lib > foo.txt and then inspecting foo.txt to see if the symbol is there. dumpbin is part of your VS installation located in <VS dlocation>/VC/bin.

If the symbol is there then it means your app's compiler or compilation flags differ from the ones used to build curl.
If it's not there then your build of curl is somehow broken.

RaJiska

Ah, no problem, a bit of my fault too as I switched between then both at the begining as MinGW had troubles running my code I made with VS.

Concerning the dumpbin, it effectively doesn't seem to be there, here is its content (which is pretty short):

Dump of file libcurl.lib

File Type: LIBRARY

Summary

      C3 .debug$S
      14 .idata$2
      14 .idata$3
       4 .idata$4
       4 .idata$5
       C .idata$6

Now, here is how I built it at first:

Downloaded cURL 7.43.0 package
Opened prompt and inputed ' "<PathtoVS>/bin/vcvars32.bat" '
Inputed 'cd "<PathToCurlUpFolder>/curl-7.43.0/winbuild" '
Inputed 'nmake /f Makefile.vc mode=dll
Waited for it to finish, then went in 'libcurl-vc-x86-release-dll-ipv6-sspi-winssl'
Copied the content of include/curl in my project directory (which is correctly linked)
Did same as above with lib/libcurl.lib
Left untouched lib/libcurl.exp , bin/curl.exe , libcurl.dll

Is there something wrong I have been doing ?
Thanks.

RaJiska

Hello' Again,

I've decided to try it over MinGW compiler and a static build, apparently it got better but still have some errors.
Here is my .pro file:

QT += core gui widgets

TARGET = Launcher
TEMPLATE = app

SOURCES += main.cpp
mainwindow.cpp

HEADERS += mainwindow.h

FORMS += mainwindow.ui

DEFINES += CURL_STATICLIB
LIBS += -L"C:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/Mingw Real/includes/curl" -lcurl
LIBS += "C:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/Mingw Real/includes/curl/libcurl.a"
LIBS += "C:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/Mingw Real/includes/curl/libcurldll.a"
INCLUDEPATH += "C:/Users/Banzai/Desktop/C++/QtPgrm/Mingw Real/includes"

Also '#define CURL_STATICLIB' is declared in the header before the include of cURL.
Here is the error I got: error: undefined reference to `curl_easy_init'.
Not too sure what it could be. (I am using the 64 bits version while the compiler is 32 bits).

When I've been using the 32 bits version, here is what I got:

undefined reference to {WSAStartup@8,WSACleanup@0}
<path>/curl/libcurl.a(easy.o): bad reloc address 0x0 in section `.data'.

Apparently I've ready somewhere that I had to include something with -lwsock32, which I did this way:

LIBS += -lwsock32

Unfortunately it did not seem to change anything.
Thank you for your help.

Troubles setting up Curl

Just tried it, however, it doesn't seem to look for the right file. Here is the error message Qt threw back:

Project created by QtCreator 2015-07-16T18:24:19

undefined reference to {WSAStartup@8,WSACleanup@0} <path>/curl/libcurl.a(easy.o): bad reloc address 0x0 in section `.data'.

Just tried it, however, it doesn't seem to look for the right file.
Here is the error message Qt threw back:

undefined reference to {WSAStartup@8,WSACleanup@0}
<path>/curl/libcurl.a(easy.o): bad reloc address 0x0 in section `.data'.