A Journey of Purely Static Linking

As I mentioned last time, I found Microsoft has really messed up its console Unicode support when the C runtime DLL (as versus the static runtime library) is used. So I decided to have a try with linking everything statically in my project that uses C++ REST SDK (a.k.a. cpprestsdk). This is not normally recommended, but in my case it has two obvious advantages:

• It would solve the Unicode I/O problem.
• It would be possible to ship just the binaries without requiring the target PC to install the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime.

It took me several hours to get it rolling, but I felt it was worthwhile.

Before I start, I need to mention that cpprestsdk has a solution file that supports building a static library. It turned out not satisfactory:

• It used NuGet packages for Boost and OpenSSL, and both versions were out of date. Worse, my Visual Studio 2017 IDE hung while I tried to update the packages. Really a nuisance.
• The static library, as well as all its dependencies like Boost and OpenSSL, still uses the C runtime DLL. I figured it might be easier to go completely on my own.

Prerequisites

Boost

This part is straightforward. After going into the Boost directory, I only need to type (I use version 1.65.1):

bootstrap.bat
.\b2.exe toolset=msvc -j 2 --with-chrono --with-date_time --with-regex --with-system --with-thread release link=static runtime-link=static stage
.\b2.exe toolset=msvc -j 2 --with-chrono --with-date_time --with-regex --with-system --with-thread release link=shared stage

(The last line is needed only because ‘cmake ..’ would otherwise fail to detect Boost in the ‘Building C++ REST SDK’ stage.)

OpenSSL

As I already have Perl and NASM installed, installing OpenSSL is trivial too (I use version 1.0.2l):

perl Configure VC-WIN32 --prefix=C:/Libraries/OpenSSL
ms\do_nasm
nmake -f ms\nt.mak
nmake -f ms\nt.mak install

zlib

This part requires a small change to the build script (for version 1.2.11). I need to open win32\Makefile.msc and change all occurrences of ‘-MD’ to ‘-MT’. Then these commands will work:

nmake -f win32\Makefile.msc zlib.lib
mkdir C:\Libraries\zlib
mkdir C:\Libraries\zlib\include
mkdir C:\Libraries\zlib\lib
copy zconf.h C:\Libraries\zlib\include
copy zlib.h C:\Libraries\zlib\include
copy zlib.lib C:\Libraries\zlib\lib

Building C++ REST SDK

We need to set some environment variables to help the CMake build system find where the libraries are. I set them in ‘Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Environment variables’:¹

BOOST_ROOT=C:\src\boost_1_65_1
OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=C:\Libraries\OpenSSL
INCLUDE=C:\Libraries\zlib\include
LIB=C:\Libraries\zlib\lib

(The above setting assumes Boost is unpacked under C:\src.)

We would need to create the solution files for the current environment under cpprestsdk:

cd Release
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

If the environment is set correctly, the last command should succeed and report no errors. A cpprest.sln should be generated now.

We then open this solution file. As we only need the release files, we should change the ‘Solution Configuration’ from ‘Debug’ to ‘Release’. After that, we need to find the project ‘cpprest’ in ‘Solution Explorer’, go to its ‘Properties’, and make the following changes under ‘General’:

• Set Target Name to ‘cpprest’.
• Set Target Extension to ‘.lib’.
• Set Configuration Type to ‘Static library (.lib)’.

And the most important change we need under ‘C/C++ > Code Generation’:

• Set Runtime Library to ‘Multi-threaded (/MT)’.

Click on ‘OK’ to accept the changes. Then we can build this project.

Like zlib, we need to copy the header and library files to a new path, and add the include and lib directories to environment variables INCLUDE and LIB, respectively. In my case, I have:

INCLUDE=C:\Libraries\cpprestsdk\include;C:\Libraries\zlib\include
LIB=C:\Libraries\cpprestsdk\lib;C:\Libraries\zlib\lib

Change to my Project

Of course, the cpprestsdk-based project needs to be adjusted too. I will first show the diff, and then give some explanations:

--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -24,14 +24,25 @@ set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${ELPP_FLAGS}")

 if(WIN32)
 set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS}\
- -DELPP_UNICODE -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0601")
-set(USED_LIBS Boost::dynamic_linking ${Boost_DATE_TIME_LIBRARY} ${Boost_SYSTEM_LIBRARY} ${Boost_THREAD_LIBRARY})
+ -DELPP_UNICODE -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0601 -D_NO_ASYNCRTIMP")
+set(USED_LIBS Winhttp httpapi bcrypt crypt32 zlib)
 else(WIN32)
 set(USED_LIBS "-lcrypto" OpenSSL::SSL ${Boost_CHRONO_LIBRARY} ${Boost_SYSTEM_LIBRARY} ${Boost_THREAD_LIBRARY})
 endif(WIN32)

 if(MSVC)
 set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /EHsc /W3")
+set(CompilerFlags
+        CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS
+        CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG
+        CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE
+        CMAKE_C_FLAGS
+        CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG
+        CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE)
+foreach(CompilerFlag ${CompilerFlags})
+  string(REPLACE "/MD" "/MT" ${CompilerFlag}
+         "${${CompilerFlag}}")
+endforeach()
 else(MSVC)
 set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -W -Wall -Wfatal-errors")
 endif(MSVC)

There are two blocks of changes. In the first block, one can see that the Boost libraries are no longer needed, but, instead, one needs to link the Windows dependencies of cpprestsdk (I found the list in Release\build\src\cpprest.vcxproj), as well as zlib. One also needs to explicitly define _NO_ASYNCRTIMP so that the cpprestsdk functions will be not treated as dllimport.

As CMake defaults to using ‘/MD’, the second block of changes replaces all occurrences of ‘/MD’ with ‘/MT’ in the compiler flags.² With these changes, I am able to generate an executable without any external dependencies.

A Gotcha

I am now used to using cmake without specifying the ‘-G’ option on Windows. By default, CMake generates Visual Studio project files: they have several advantages, including multiple configurations (selectable on the MSBuild command line like ‘/p:Configuration=Release’), and parallel building (say, using ‘/m:2’ to take advantage of two processor cores). Neither is possible with nmake. However, the executables built by this method still behave abnormally regarding outputting non-ASCII characters. Actually, I believe everything is still OK at the linking stage, but the build process then touches the executables in some mysterious way and the result becomes bad. I am not familiar with MSBuild well enough to manipulate the result, so I am going back to using ‘cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release’ followed by ‘nmake’ for now.

---

1. CMake can recognize Boost and OpenSSL by some known environment variables. I failed to find one that really worked for zlib, so the INCLUDE and LIB variables need to be explicitly set. ↩
2. This technique is shamelessly copied from a StackOverflow answer. ↩