The problem is you are not localizing library C's symbols. So you have a ODR violation when you link in A and B. You need to have a way to make these private. By default all symbols are exported. One way to do this is to have a special linker definition file for both A and B that explicitly mention which files need to be exported.
[1] ODR = One Definition Rule.
I think the best course of action here will be to ignore/disable the linker warnings(LNK4006) since C.lib needs to be part of both A.Lib and B.lib and A.Lib does not need to know that B.lib itself uses C.Lib.
You could create one library which contains A, B, C & D and then link X against that.
Since it's a library, only object modules which are actually referenced will get linked into the final executable.
Update If you can build all involved project in single solution, try this:
It should work. It doesn't invalidate anything I said before, the basic model of building C/C++ programs stays the same. VS (at least 2005 and newer) is simply smart enough to add all needed static libraries to linker command line. You can see it in project properties.
Of course this method won't help if you need to use already compiled static libraries. Then you need to add them all to exe or dll project that directly or indirectly uses them.
I don't think you can do anything about that. You should remove references to other static libs from static libs projects and add all needed static libs projects as dependences of exe or dll projects. You will just have to live with fact that any project that includes A.lib or B.lib also needs to include C.lib.
As an alternative you can turn your libraries into dlls which provide a richer model.
Statically compiled libraries simply aren't real libraries with dependency information, etc, like dlls. See how, when you build them, you don't really need to provide libraries they depend on? Headers are all that's needed. See? You can't even really say static libraries depend on something.
Static library is just an archive of compiled and not yet linked object code. It's not consistent whole. Each object file is compiled separately and remains separate entity inside the library. Linking happens when you build exe or dll. That's when you need to provide all object code. That's when all the symbol and dependency resolving happens.
If you add other static libraries to static library dependencies, librarian will simply copy all code together. Then, when building exe, linker will give you lots of warnings about duplicate symbols. You might be able to block those warnings (I don't know how) but be careful. It may conceal real problems like real duplicate symbols with differing definitions. And if you have static data defined in libraries, it probably won't work anyway.
This may not fix your link error, but it might help with your dependency tree issue.
What I do, is just use a #pragma to include a lib in the .cpp file that needs it. For example:
#pragma comment(lib:"wsock32")
Like I said, I'm not sure it would keep the symbols in that object file, I'd have to whip up an example to try it out.
Hi
As far as I know you can't disable linker warnings. However, you can ignore some of them, using command line parameter of linker eg. /ignore:4006
Put it in your project properties under linker->command line setting (don't remember exact location).
Also read this:
MSDN Forum - hiding LNK warnings
Wacek
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 9.00.x (link.exe) knows argument /ignore:4006
Poor flodin seems frustrated that nobody will explain how to disable the linker warnings. Well, I've had a similar problem, and for years I have simply lived with the fact that several hundred warnings were displayed. Now, however, thanks to the info from Link /ignore, I figured out how to disable the linker warnings.
I'm using Visual Studio 2008. In Project -> Settings -> Configuration Properties -> Librarian -> Command Line -> Additional Options, I added "/ignore:4006" (without the quotes). Now my warnings are gone!