error 126 loading external

a quick update, I compiled the externals on windows 7. I just tested compiling simplemsp~ in both max sdk 6.1 and 7.0.3
when loaded on a windows 8 machine, neither work.
The same error appears - (126 loading external)

I spent the morning hunched over no fewer than 3 computers with @Venetian, and we got this worked out. For future reference, here are a few important things to check for developers working in C++, particularly if you're using the C++(11/14) STL.

1. Be sure to define the preprocessor macro MAXAPI_USE_MSCRT before including "ext.h" (if you're lazy or superstitious, just add it to the Preprocessor section of the project properties window). This will ensure that Max doesn't try (and fail) to link to the backward-compatible, but essentially outdated "maxcrt.lib" (which doesn't provide a lot of C++ features).

2. If you don't want the users of your externals to require Microsoft's C++ Redistributable Package for the compiler you're using, compile your objects statically with the \MT flag. Yes, your objects will be unnecessarily larger, but what's a few KB compared to failure to load due to missing dependencies?

3. If you are including , make sure that your function calls to acosh(), asinh(), atanh(), expm1(), exp2(), log2(), round() and trunc() are properly namespaced with std:: .

I think that's what we learned today, hope this helps someone tomorrow...

Jeremy

Thanks very much Jeremy!

to recap what's said above:
The inital error 126 was because I compiled an /MDd build (dynamic use of C runtime library) and in debug. The computer I tested on didn't have this. To get around these, you can statically link in the C runtime library, using Multi-threaded build (/MT), and /MTd or /MDd for debug versions.

1. If you use C++11, you won't want to use Cycling's build of the MicroSoft RunTime library, so in Visual Studio, Property Pages->Preprocessor (for the main external) set a flag "MAXAPI_USE_MSCRT" and hit apply/okay so every file uses this flag.

2. In Linker, you should delete libcmt.lib from being ignored - as you would want these two libcmt.lib and libcmtd.lib

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/abx4dbyh%28v=vs.110%29

3. For C++ code, in C/C++->advanced, you would compile as C++ for all bar the .c files.

If you get an Error 127 you could try building with Max 6 sdk. As above uses of round(), trunc(), atanh() etc should be calling the std:: library versions.

I need to correct your final point. The Max 6 vs. Max 7 SDK makes no difference. The difference was that your Max 6 SDK project didn't link to the jitlib.lib, whereas your Max 7 SDK project did. If you link to the jitlib.lib (with whichever SDK), you will need to explicitly use the std:: namespace for those functions, but you should be using namespace std anyway! :-)

great info Jeremy, thanks alot

Jeremy, you are my Max hero

For posterity though, I tried adding MAXAPI_USE_MSCRT to my preprocessor (I'm superstitious), and this caused this particular problem to mutate into an error 193--external not built for Windows. However, making sure to define MAXAPI_USE_MSCRT before importing ext.h seems to have fixed things.

Hey, I'm not super techy, so if you could explain how you fixed this in simple terms that would be great. I tried downloading beat~, pitch~, and segment~, and they all get the same error 126 message.

I followed Jeremy's and Venetian's directions but am now getting the error message:

Error    1    error LNK2005: sprintf already defined in MaxAPI.lib(MaxAPI.dll)    L:\Code\DSP\platform\MaxMSP\audio\elvis3~\LIBCMTD.lib(sprintf.obj)

Thanks for any suggestions,
Sukandar

p.s. also, judging by how often this problem shows up on the forum, it would be cool if C74 could address this "error 126" issue in the developer documentation. I just downloaded the latest 8.x SDK and MaxAPI.pdf still has a timestamp from 2015.