Visual Studio 2010's strange "warning LNK4042"

Question

I've just been beaten (rather hardly) on the head by some non-trivial warning from Visual Studio 2010 (C++).

The compilation gave the following output:

1 Debug\is.obj : warning LNK4042: object specified more than once; extras ignored
1 Debug\make.obj : warning LNK4042: object specified more than once; extras ignored
1 Debug\view.obj : warning LNK4042: object specified more than once; extras ignored
1 identity.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol void __cdecl test::identity::view(void) (?view@identity@test@@YAXXZ) referenced in function void __cdecl test::identity::identity(void) (?identity@0test@@YAXXZ)
1 identity.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol void __cdecl test::identity::make(void) (?make@identity@test@@YAXXZ) referenced in function void __cdecl test::identity::identity(void) (?identity@0test@@YAXXZ)
1 range.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol void __cdecl test::range::is(void) (?is@range@test@@YAXXZ) referenced in function void __cdecl test::range::range(void) (?range@0test@@YAXXZ)

Linker errors are always a pain to debug... but there were unresolved references, and so I checked... but the source is well-formed... and finally it hit me:

My folder hierarchy looks like so:

src/   identity/     is.cpp     make.cpp     view.cpp   range/     is.cpp     make.cpp     view.cpp 

and so does the hierarchy in the Solution (I always set it up so that it mimicks the "real" folder structure).

And the diagnostic outputs:

Debug\is.obj Debug\make.obj Debug\view.obj 

Along with a warning which says that the .obj has been passed twice to the linker and that one will be ignored.

Search no more: Visual has neatly flatten my folder hierarchy, and therefore is unable to neatly compile the source.

At the moment, I am simply thinking of renaming the files, that should cover the issue...

... but is there a way to have Visual Studio NOT flatten the file hierarchy ?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem with linker warning LNK4042: object specified more than once; extras ignored. In my case Visual Studio was trying to compile both header and source files with the same name - MyClass.h and MyClass.cpp. It happened because I renamed .cpp file to .h and Visual Studio got confused. I noticed the problem by looking at the compiler logs in the Debug directory. To resolve just remove .h file from the project then add it again.

Answer 2

Just wanted to cross post what I believe to be the answer, if you open the properties for the entire project, and the change the value under C/C++ -> Output Files -> "Object File Name" to be the following:

$(IntDir)/%(RelativeDir)/

Under VS 2010, I believe this will disambiguate all of the object files (as I believe windows won't let you under any crazy circumstances have two files with the same names in the same directory). Please also check out the details here.