VS Arduino - What happens under water when adding a library?

Mar 16^th, 2026 at 1:37am (UTC)

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VS Arduino › Visual Micro › General Board › What happens under water when adding a library?

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What happens under water when adding a library? (Read 4975 times)

Bas Junior Member Offline Posts: 50 Joined: Feb 20^th, 2017	What happens under water when adding a library? May 16^th, 2017 at 9:08pm	Print Post
	Can you please enlighten me in my 100th attempt to understand using libraries with the VisualMicro extension .. What happens when you add a library to a project when the "create project" setting is off and when it is on? If I add a library to my project with the settings off, and then remove the include from my main .ino file .. the project still seems to find the library, so it looks like there are more changes made then just the #include If I look in the build folder, I see several duplicate .o files (that the linker is of course complaining about) Mostly one in the main folder and one in a subfolder for the library. Which setting / reference / inlcuded project setting is causing the compiled objects in the library folder and how are they compiled in the main folder?
	« Last Edit: May 16^th, 2017 at 9:12pm by Bas »

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Tim@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 12204 Location: United Kingdom Joined: Apr 10^th, 2010	Re: What happens under water when adding a library? Reply #1 - May 16^th, 2017 at 9:25pm	Print Post
	Hi, Quote: remove the include from my main .ino file the project still seems to find the library, so it looks like there are more changes made then just the #include I think you are just talking about intellisense, the compile fails? Except for the following conditions. #includes are auto discovered in both .ino and .cpp sources. Also other libraries are discovered from the .cpp sources of discovered libraries. When you have the "create lib project" setting ON, a new project is added to solution with the library sources. Doing this will probably allow Visual studio to show intellisense for the library even if it is not being used in your code. You are then instructed to use the "References" setting of the master project to add a reference to the newly created library project. Doing this causes visual micro to always attempt to compile the library when the project compiles regardless of discovered #includes. Adding a reference also allows visual studio to show the correct intellisense when editing the library project code. If the code #includes a library then the library will always be compiled if the library exists in an official Arduino (regardless of visual studio solution configuration, this is also how Arduino IDE works) other info Build>Rebuild always gives clean compile removing all old temp files which when deleting sources can cause confusion. Doesn't seem to apply to your questions but worth a mention.


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Bas Junior Member Offline Posts: 50 Joined: Feb 20^th, 2017	Re: What happens under water when adding a library? Reply #2 - May 17^th, 2017 at 6:33am	Print Post
	My main interest here is whats happening during compilation, not intellisense. So if I understand correctly ... Includes are discovered automatically, and this goes on recursively. NOT adding a reference will not have any effect on the compilation process in terms of finding sources files to compile (it will effect intellisense) Adding a library as a shared project does not have any effect on the compilation process That leaves the following questions: If one file of a library is included in my .ino will this cause the compilation of all files in the same library folder? When does the compilation of a sourcefile from a library results in an .o file in the main build-folder and when does it result in the .o file being placed in a subfolder for the library? (The results in my build folder show nearly every library file being placed in the main build folder AND in the subfolder per library. This is of course causing all kinds of "duplicates" errors during linking) What locations are used in the auto-discovery process when I have No IDE selected? Sorry to be asking so many questions on this .. but I'm really trying to understand this process . EDIT: After compiling and receiving lots of "already defined" messages, I've found the file "include_path.txt" and it contains something that looks like being the cause of this: Quote: arduino ts\mega D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\Adafruit_INA219 D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\Adafruit-BMP085 D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\DHT-sensor-library D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\MPU6050-jarzebski D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\MemoryFree D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\StandardCplusplus D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\Timer D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\SoftwareSerial\src D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\ic2devlib D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\Wire\src D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\DS3231 D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\SD D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\SPI C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\m3isb2kz.cfl\Micro Platforms\default\debuggers\VM_DBG D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\EEPROMEx D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\SenseNextionFramework\src D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\SenseFramework\src D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries\Nextion C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\m3isb2kz.cfl\Micro Platforms\visualmicro\ide\libraries ies C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\m3isb2kz.cfl\Micro Platforms\default\debuggers D:\Development\CSense\C-Sense2.0\source\libraries The last line includes all libraries again, after they are specifically added earlier in the file. Is this correct??
	« Last Edit: May 17^th, 2017 at 5:52pm by Bas »

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Tim@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 12204 Location: United Kingdom Joined: Apr 10^th, 2010	Re: What happens under water when adding a library? Reply #3 - May 19^th, 2017 at 2:43pm	Print Post
	I think the confusion is what I explained before. You have added a reference to a shared project that you expect to be treated as a library. However the library does not contain a library.properties text file. Therefore visual micro is treating is a project code and attempting to compile as project code and not library. In this case you will see a .o in the project code folder and not the lib folder. Quote: Adding a library as a shared project does not have any effect on the compilation process Yes it does. It causes the library to be auto discovered even if there is no #include.


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Bas Junior Member Offline Posts: 50 Joined: Feb 20^th, 2017	Re: What happens under water when adding a library? Reply #4 - May 22^nd, 2017 at 7:49pm	Print Post
	Ok .. something else I learned tonight .... If the libraries.properties is in the main folder of a library, but the .vxitems file is in the src subfolder .. then it will not be seen as an Arduino library when added to a solution as shared project And that after adding a shared project to the references of a project, the library folder is added to the projects "AdditionalIncludeDirectories" .. but these are not removed is you remove the reference from the main project
	« Last Edit: May 22^nd, 2017 at 8:14pm by Bas »

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Tim@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 12204 Location: United Kingdom Joined: Apr 10^th, 2010	Re: What happens under water when adding a library? Reply #5 - May 22^nd, 2017 at 9:41pm	Print Post
	Hi, Interesting. yes the vcxitems is expect to be in the library root, visual micro can't know it is in a library unless it can establish what the root is. In a shared project the "special arduino libraries" folder(s) are not factored in at all. The AdditionalIncludeDirectories is only for intellisense. It should include the library path if visual micro believes the library has to be compiled. I will check on what happens when you remove a shared reference, vs has a few caching issues in this area but maybe it's a visual micro issue.


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