How to statically link VCPKG produced .lib file in Visual Studio

Question

I use VCPKG to build third party libraries like libcurl for example. I have dynamic and static builds. Obviously, import .lib and object .lib files are contained in two different folders, x64-windows and x64-windows-static respectively. I want to link object libcurl.lib statically with my program, but cannot figure out how to configure Visual Studio to do it. It always ends up using the import lib, rather than object lib and thus my program ends up requiring libcurl.dll at execution.

I have configured the main project to use /MT runtime library. I have tried configuring linker to use additional libraries folder pointing to the static lib folder and additional dependencies. I have even tried using full path to the object libcurl.lib file in linker additional dependencies.

When I us /MT switch for runtime libraries, I can tell by using Dependency Walker that all the regular libraries like vcruntime are integrated in the executable, not loaded as DLLs, but libucurl.dll is still there, loaded dynamically.

It seems that due to VCPKG automatic include path integration, Visual Studio always finds and uses the import libcurl.lib first, even if I specify the full path of the object libcurl.lib in linker inputs.

How do I configure Visual Studio to statically link the right .lib file?

Answer 1

OK, I found the solution for anyone who might have the same problem.

By default, Visual Studio uses x64-windows, or x86-windows "triplet"

You can see the automatically deduced triplet by setting your MSBuild verbosity to Normal or higher:

Shortcut: Ctrl+Q "build and run"

Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run -> MSBuild project build output verbosity

To override the automatically chosen triplet and use x64-windows-static or x86-windows-static, you can specify the MSBuild property VcpkgTriplet in your .vcxproj by adding this to the Globals PropertyGroup.

<PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
  <!-- .... -->
  <VcpkgTriplet Condition="'$(Platform)'=='Win32'">x86-windows-static</VcpkgTriplet>
  <VcpkgTriplet Condition="'$(Platform)'=='x64'">x64-windows-static</VcpkgTriplet>
</PropertyGroup>

https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/blob/master/docs/users/integration.md#with-msbuild