plotkin@alumni.colorado.edu (Leo Plotkin) (06/08/91)
Greetings Mr. and Ms. Usenetter and all the programmers I see!
As you might have guessed, I'm having a tremendous difficulty
with my lifestyle. Specifically, the Software Development Kit
is failing to develop anything other than a shortage of disk
space within my computer, and an urge to hit Microsoft marketing
executives with an axe within me.
I used the 'install' program that comes with the kit, following
the instructions in the installation and update guide to the
letter. I wholeheartedly answered 'yes' to every question,
including the one about Bill Gates, a 55 gallon drum of KY jelly,
and a condo in Aspen.
The drives churned, lights flashed, angels sang, and 11 megabytes
vanished from my hard drive.
With almost sexual anticipation I changed directories to the
sample source code section, to the very first program, and typed
'make generic'
Once again the lights flashed, the drive churned, angels sang, and
80 lines of link error messages flashed before my shocked visage.
Unresolved externals, they said. Functions like DIALOGBOX not
found, in generic.c and, even more frightening, in the LIB files
themselves! (I can mail the error messages to those interested)
I remembered something about a TOOLS.INI not being found during
installation. No problem, a set HOME = c:\bin and a c:\bin\TOOLS.INI
were created. TOOLS.INI was stuffed with recommended [pwb-pwbc]
entries. (by hand. Install claims to be changing this file and
copying to to a tools.bak, but it's lying like a bad rug) And
still the same 30 unresolved externals persisted.
I added the dynamic runtime libraries to the link command line,
together with snocrt.lib and the math87.lib file for good measure.
This cut the errors down to 17. I copied the tools.ini file to
every directory in my path, just about. No effect. Even lighting
prayer candles, painting a pentagram on my computer with goat's
blood and sacrificing a Macintosh failed to appease the linker.
Has anyone else run into this? If so, what did you do? Where in
the weighty tomes of documentation for MS-C 5.1, MASM 5.1 or SDK
is the accursed TOOLS.INI described?
I called the MS technical question line recommended to me by the
recording at 800-541-1261, and reached someone other than the friendly
knowledgeable Microsoft people.
My problem solving repertoire exhausted, I turn to you. You're my
last hope. Please enlighten me with a solution, the real Microsoft
support number, or the name of a good truck driving school.
May the deity of your choice reward you by eternal bliss with
Christina Applegate and/or Kevin Costner for your help.
Desperately awaiting your mail,
--Leo.
--
#include <stdio.h> /*** Leo Plotkin@tramp.colorado.edu. ***/
main() { FILE *f; f=fopen("Makefile","w"); fprintf(f,"\na.out: s.o\n\tcc %s\n",
"s.o -ll");f=fopen("s.l","w");fprintf(f,"%%%%\n[!?\\.]([\\n\\t ]|$) {printf%s",
"(\"%c :-)%c\",yytext[0],yytext[1]);}\n%%\nmain(){yylex();}\n"); } /* HEH */