Create .lib file from .dll

dll2lib.txt

Create .lib file from .dll
Published December 5, 2008	Game Development , IT 60 Comments 
Tags: C#, dll, lib, library, linking
When working with 3rd party win dll’s you somtimes miss the according .lib file required to compile against it. There is a MS KB article showing how to generate a .lib file from a .dll, however the required steps are not described detailed enough I think. So here is my quick guide:

Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt, you find its shortcut in Start->Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio->Tools. Now run the dumpbin command to get a list of all exported functions of your dll:


dumpbin /exports C:\yourpath\yourlib.dll

This will print quite a bit of text to the console. However we are only interested in the functions:


ordinal hint RVA      name

1    0 00017770 jcopy_block_row
2    1 00017710 jcopy_sample_rows
3    2 000176C0 jdiv_round_up
4    3 000156D0 jinit_1pass_quantizer
5    4 00016D90 jinit_2pass_quantizer
6    5 00005750 jinit_c_coef_controller
...etc

Now copy all those function names (only the names!) and paste them into a new textfile. Name the nextfile yourlib.def and put the line “EXPORTS” at its top. My yourlib.def file looks like this:


EXPORTS
jcopy_block_row
jcopy_sample_rows
jdiv_round_up
jinit_1pass_quantizer
jinit_2pass_quantizer
jinit_c_coef_controller
...

Now from that definition file, we can finally create the .lib file. We use the “lib” tool for this, so run this command in your Visual Studio Command Prompt:


lib /def:C:\mypath\mylib.def /OUT:C:\mypath\mylib.lib

That’s it, happy coding 🙂