VS 2015 compiling cocos2d-x 3.3 error "fatal error C1189: #error: Macro definition of snprintf conflicts with Standard Library function declaration"

Question

When I compile cocos2d-x (version 3.3) using visual studio 2015, an error occured, saying:

fatal error C1189: #error: Macro definition of snprintf conflicts with Standard Library function declaration (编译源文件 ..\base\s3tc.cpp)

The source code is:

#ifdef snprintf
    #error Macro definition of snprintf conflicts with Standard Library 
             function declaration
#endif

Anybody can tell me what's wrong?

Answer 1

Until now, Many libraries & programs used snprintf() function by defining it as _snprintf(), since _snprintf() was supported.

#define snprintf _snprintf

Finally, Visual Studio 14 defines snprintf()!

Since, snprintf() is now officially supported. We should never #define it.

Doing it will overshadow new snprintf() function defined in stdio.h.

To restrict that, this is added in stdio.h

#ifdef snprintf
    #error: Macro definition of snprintf conflicts with Standard Library function declaration”
#endif

Hence, your code doesn't compile.

It is true that on all previous versions of Visual Studio, you must use _snprintf() function. But VS 2014 onwards you should not #define it with _snprintf().

Somewhere in your code or most likely in cocos headers, this is done and hence the error.

Check that and remove that #define.

snprintf() is part of C99 specifications.

To enable C99 support

add this in your program

#if _MSC_VER>=1900
#  define STDC99
#endif

In case you don't know what _MSC_VER macro values are

...
MSVC++ 14.0 _MSC_VER == 1900 (Visual Studio 2015)
MSVC++ 12.0 _MSC_VER == 1800 (Visual Studio 2013)
MSVC++ 11.0 _MSC_VER == 1700 (Visual Studio 2012)
MSVC++ 10.0 _MSC_VER == 1600 (Visual Studio 2010)
MSVC++ 9.0  _MSC_VER == 1500 (Visual Studio 2008)
MSVC++ 8.0  _MSC_VER == 1400 (Visual Studio 2005)
MSVC++ 7.1  _MSC_VER == 1310 (Visual Studio .NET 2003)
MSVC++ 7.0  _MSC_VER == 1300
MSVC++ 6.0  _MSC_VER == 1200
MSVC++ 5.0  _MSC_VER == 1100
MSVC++ 4.0  _MSC_VER == 1000
MSVC++ 2.0  _MSC_VER ==  900
MSVC++ 1.0  _MSC_VER ==  800
C/C++  7.0  _MSC_VER ==  700
C      6.0  _MSC_VER ==  600

Answer 2

Just find the definition of snprintf in your code and undefine it while on VS2015.
Something like:

#if _MSC_VER < 1900 //vs2015 already have this function
#define snprintf _snprintf_s 
#endif