Building a C Program using PostgreSQL on Windows with Visual Studio Community 2015

Question

I'm trying to go through an example using C and PostgreSQL, but I'm unable to find the libpq-fe.h when I try to compile through Visual Studio Community 2015 on Windows. I've looked at this answer related to adding aditional dependencies, but the compiler keeps giving me the error:

C1083: Cannot open include file: 'libpq-fe.h': No such file or directory

In the Project Properties > Configuration Properties I've added the location for the libpq-fe.h header:

C/C++ > General > Additional Include Directories: C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.5\include\libpq

As well as the library location:

Linker > General > Additional Library Directories: C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.5\lib
Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies: libpq.lib

I haven't even started adding the PostgreSQL related code yet, here's the start of my main application, the error comes from line 3:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<libpq-fe.h>

int main(void) {

Is there a step I'm missing or am I using the wrong property settings for VS2015?

Eelke · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-28 20:10:22Z

2

I assume you installed postgresql using the enterpriseDB installer.

The include path should be C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.5\include without libpq. Also make sure you set the settings for the same combination of Configuration and Platform as you are building.

answered Jan 28, 2016 at 20:10

Eelke

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4 Comments

Shaun Over a year ago

Thank you, this does get rid of the include file error. And I did use the enterpriseDB installer. But now when I do a test with int lib_ver = PQlibVersion();, I get a new error: LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _PQlibVersion referenced in function _main. Do I have to add files individually to the Linker > Input > Additional Dependencies list?

Eelke Over a year ago

I'm pretty sure the linker settings in your question are correct (I'm not at home to verify my own project at the moment). Did you install a 32 or 64 bits postgres and did you build for the same? Thought I'm not sure it matters for linking against libpq.lib but I know it does for the libpq.dll at runtime.

Shaun Over a year ago

I installed 64 bit postgres (postgresql-9.5.0-1-windows-x64) and I switched the settings, Active solution platform and Platform in the Configuration Manager to x64.

Shaun Over a year ago

This other question helped me get the rest of the setup figured out. I had to move some .dlls (which were in C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.5\bin) into the project directory. This seems like it might not be the ideal solution, but trying to like to that bin directory didn't seem to help.

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