unresolved external symbol __imp__fprintf and __imp____iob_func, SDL2

Question

I have finally figured out why this is happening !

In visual studio 2015, stdin, stderr, stdout are defined as follow :

#define stdin  (__acrt_iob_func(0))
#define stdout (__acrt_iob_func(1))
#define stderr (__acrt_iob_func(2))

But previously, they were defined as:

#define stdin  (&__iob_func()[0])
#define stdout (&__iob_func()[1])
#define stderr (&__iob_func()[2])

So now __iob_func is not defined anymore which leads to a link error when using a .lib file compiled with previous versions of visual studio.

To solve the issue, you can try defining __iob_func() yourself which should return an array containing {*stdin,*stdout,*stderr}.

Regarding the other link errors about stdio functions (in my case it was sprintf()), you can add legacy_stdio_definitions.lib to your linker options.

To Milan Babuškov, IMO, this is exactly what the replacement function should look like :-)

FILE _iob[] = {*stdin, *stdout, *stderr};

extern "C" FILE * __cdecl __iob_func(void)
{
    return _iob;
}

Microsoft has a special note on this (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb531344.aspx#BK_CRT):

The printf and scanf family of functions are now defined inline.

The definitions of all of the printf and scanf functions have been moved inline into stdio.h, conio.h, and other CRT headers. This is a breaking change that leads to a linker error (LNK2019, unresolved external symbol) for any programs that declared these functions locally without including the appropriate CRT headers. If possible, you should update the code to include the CRT headers (that is, add #include ) and the inline functions, but if you do not want to modify your code to include these header files, an alternative solution is to add an additional library to your linker input, legacy_stdio_definitions.lib.

To add this library to your linker input in the IDE, open the context menu for the project node, choose Properties, then in the Project Properties dialog box, choose Linker, and edit the Linker Input to add legacy_stdio_definitions.lib to the semi-colon-separated list.

If your project links with static libraries that were compiled with a release of Visual C++ earlier than 2015, the linker might report an unresolved external symbol. These errors might reference internal stdio definitions for _iob, _iob_func, or related imports for certain stdio functions in the form of __imp_*. Microsoft recommends that you recompile all static libraries with the latest version of the Visual C++ compiler and libraries when you upgrade a project. If the library is a third-party library for which source is not available, you should either request an updated binary from the third party or encapsulate your usage of that library into a separate DLL that you compile with the older version of the Visual C++ compiler and libraries.

As answered above, the right answer is to compile everything with VS2015, but for interest the following is my analysis of the problem.

This symbol does not appear to be defined in any static library provided by Microsoft as part of VS2015, which is rather peculiar since all others are. To discover why, we need to look at the declaration of that function and, more importantly, how it's used.

Here's a snippet from the Visual Studio 2008 headers:

_CRTIMP FILE * __cdecl __iob_func(void);
#define stdin (&__iob_func()[0])
#define stdout (&__iob_func()[1])
#define stderr (&__iob_func()[2])

So we can see that the job of the function is to return the start of an array of FILE objects (not handles, the "FILE *" is the handle, FILE is the underlying opaque data structure storing the important state goodies). The users of this function are the three macros stdin, stdout and stderr which are used for various fscanf, fprintf style calls.

Now let's take a look at how Visual Studio 2015 defines the same things:

_ACRTIMP_ALT FILE* __cdecl __acrt_iob_func(unsigned);
#define stdin (__acrt_iob_func(0))
#define stdout (__acrt_iob_func(1))
#define stderr (__acrt_iob_func(2))

So the approach has changed for the replacement function to now return the file handle rather than the address of the array of file objects, and the macros have changed to simply call the function passing in an identifying number.

So why can't they/we provide a compatible API? There are two key rules which Microsoft can't contravene in terms of their original implementation via __iob_func:

1. There must be an array of three FILE structures which can be indexed in the same manner as before.
2. The structural layout of FILE cannot change.

Any change in either of the above would mean existing compiled code linked against that would go badly wrong if that API is called.

Let's take a look at how FILE was/is defined.

First the VS2008 FILE definition:

struct _iobuf {
        char *_ptr;
        int   _cnt;
        char *_base;
        int   _flag;
        int   _file;
        int   _charbuf;
        int   _bufsiz;
        char *_tmpfname;
        };
typedef struct _iobuf FILE;

And now the VS2015 FILE definition:

typedef struct _iobuf
{
    void* _Placeholder;
} FILE;

So there is the crux of it: the structure has changed shape. Existing compiled code referring to __iob_func relies upon the fact that the data returned is both an array that can be indexed and that in that array the elements are the same distance apart.

The possible solutions mentioned in the answers above along these lines would not work (if called) for a few reasons:

FILE _iob[] = {*stdin, *stdout, *stderr};

extern "C" FILE * __cdecl __iob_func(void)
{
    return _iob;
}

The FILE array _iob would be compiled with VS2015 and so it would be laid out as a block of structures containing a void*. Assuming 32-bit alignment, these elements would be 4 bytes apart. So _iob[0] is at offset 0, _iob[1] is at offset 4 and _iob[2] is at offset 8. The calling code will instead expect FILE to be much longer, aligned at 32 bytes on my system, and so it will take the address of the returned array and add 0 bytes to get to element zero (that one is okay), but for _iob[1] it will deduce that it needs to add 32 bytes and for _iob[2] it will deduce that it needs to add 64-bytes (because that's how it looked in the VS2008 headers). And indeed the disassembled code for VS2008 demonstrates this.

A secondary issue with the above solution is that it copies the content of the FILE structure (*stdin), not the FILE * handle. So any VS2008 code would be looking at a different underlying structure to VS2015. This might work if the structure only contained pointers, but that's a big risk. In any case the first issue renders this irrelevant.

The only hack I've been able to dream up is one in which __iob_func walks the call stack to work out which actual file handle they are looking for (based on the offset added to the returned address) and returns a computed value such that it gives the right answer. This is every bit as insane as it sounds, but the prototype for x86 only (not x64) is listed below for your amusement. It worked okay in my experiments, but your mileage may vary - not recommended for production use!

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <dbghelp.h>

/* #define LOG */

#if defined(_M_IX86)

#define GET_CURRENT_CONTEXT(c, contextFlags) \
  do { \
    c.ContextFlags = contextFlags; \
    __asm    call x \
    __asm x: pop eax \
    __asm    mov c.Eip, eax \
    __asm    mov c.Ebp, ebp \
    __asm    mov c.Esp, esp \
  } while(0);

#else

/* This should work for 64-bit apps, but doesn't */
#define GET_CURRENT_CONTEXT(c, contextFlags) \
  do { \
    c.ContextFlags = contextFlags; \
    RtlCaptureContext(&c); \
} while(0);

#endif

FILE * __cdecl __iob_func(void)
{
    CONTEXT c = { 0 };
    STACKFRAME64 s = { 0 };
    DWORD imageType;
    HANDLE hThread = GetCurrentThread();
    HANDLE hProcess = GetCurrentProcess();

    GET_CURRENT_CONTEXT(c, CONTEXT_FULL);

#ifdef _M_IX86
    imageType = IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_I386;
    s.AddrPC.Offset = c.Eip;
    s.AddrPC.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrFrame.Offset = c.Ebp;
    s.AddrFrame.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrStack.Offset = c.Esp;
    s.AddrStack.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
#elif _M_X64
    imageType = IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_AMD64;
    s.AddrPC.Offset = c.Rip;
    s.AddrPC.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrFrame.Offset = c.Rsp;
    s.AddrFrame.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrStack.Offset = c.Rsp;
    s.AddrStack.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
#elif _M_IA64
    imageType = IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_IA64;
    s.AddrPC.Offset = c.StIIP;
    s.AddrPC.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrFrame.Offset = c.IntSp;
    s.AddrFrame.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrBStore.Offset = c.RsBSP;
    s.AddrBStore.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
    s.AddrStack.Offset = c.IntSp;
    s.AddrStack.Mode = AddrModeFlat;
#else
#error "Platform not supported!"
#endif

    if (!StackWalk64(imageType, hProcess, hThread, &s, &c, NULL, SymFunctionTableAccess64, SymGetModuleBase64, NULL))
    {
#ifdef LOG
        printf("Error: 0x%08X (Address: %p)\n", GetLastError(), (LPVOID)s.AddrPC.Offset);
#endif
        return NULL;
    }

    if (s.AddrReturn.Offset == 0)
    {
        return NULL;
    }

    {
        unsigned char const * assembly = (unsigned char const *)(s.AddrReturn.Offset);
#ifdef LOG
        printf("Code bytes proceeding call to __iob_func: %p: %02X,%02X,%02X\n", assembly, *assembly, *(assembly + 1), *(assembly + 2));
#endif
        if (*assembly == 0x83 && *(assembly + 1) == 0xC0 && (*(assembly + 2) == 0x20 || *(assembly + 2) == 0x40))
        {
            if (*(assembly + 2) == 32)
            {
                return (FILE*)((unsigned char *)stdout - 32);
            }
            if (*(assembly + 2) == 64)
            {
                return (FILE*)((unsigned char *)stderr - 64);
            }

        }
        else
        {
            return stdin;
        }
    }
    return NULL;
}