Where do you install your libs? (Windows)

[Wraithan]

Was recently getting my build enviornment back up and running and realized I haven't used many third party libs on Windows, and never when I was running VS (Used to be diehard Code::Blocks). I am curious how the majority of you organize your third party libs.

On my linux systems usually they installed to the same area that gcc/g++ had it's includes/libs but on windows it seems that is a frowned on practice (to taint your compiler's default includes/libs) so I was thinking I may just make their own folders under an includes/libs directory on the root of my music/videos/storage/development drive.

I mainly interested in Windows solutions, but other OS's can chime in as well .

[bithub]

On linux: /usr/lib
On Windows: C:\code\lib

[Brafil]

C:\Dev\<Compiler>\lib

Some libraries might not work for all compilers

[Tonto]

I think my question here is similarly concerned
Visual Studio

I have most of my code, libraries, sdks, installed to c:\hell
I've also started using cygwin -- naively filling up /home/me with everything (everything!)

[Cactus_Hugger]

I use the following structure:

X:
   mingw
      // mingw's sub directories
      msys
      addons
         bin // dlls
         include // .h
         lib // .a

[dwks]

When I last used Windows for development (a long time ago) I always just put everything in C:\Windows\System32 or wherever those thousands of DLLs go. But that's because the only DLLs I needed were about ten related to the SDL.

On Linux now I'm very organized in comparison. I have a ~/bin directory for executables (there are about 80 in there at the moment). Usually I install .so libraries through my package management system, and they go in the standard places, but if I build a library myself I leave its .so files in some place or another.

One very useful environment variable: LD_LIBRARY_PATH. (PATH doesn't work, you need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH.) If (in bash) you run a command like this, e.g.,

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=../lib ./executable

then the loader (run "man ld.so", it's interesting) will look there as well as in the standard places for .so files. Of course, you can also add something like that to your .bashrc to make it global. Oh, and ldd is useful to figure out exactly which libraries you're using.

[brewbuck]

I put each library in its own directory.

/libstash/foolib/include|lib
/libstash/barlib/include|lib
etc

Throwing all the includes and libraries into a central location leads to:

1. A huge directory
2. The possibility of name conflicts between libraries and, more importantly, headers
3. The possibility of using the wrong library

IMHO the include and lib paths for each library should be explicitly spelled out in the build process (except system or SDK libs which obviously live in their own locations).

The user should be able to switch between versions of a library by a minor tweak to a path in the build system. They shouldn't have to swap files in and out of a monolithic directory.