如何告诉 Visual Studio 我的其他 .dll 文件在哪里？

Question

I have recently switched my IDE to Visual Studio 2019 for C++ projects. I easily followed a tutorial into setting up a new library like SFML into visual studio, and tell it where the additional include and library directories are.

But there is something else that is required for it to work, which are the .dll files. Every page I followed, even the Documentation by the SFML website , it says that they have to be in the same directory as my project. That means I need to copy-paste the 7-8 files into my project directory. This really makes the folder look untidy. I would like to create a new folder and tell Visual Studio where those files are. I tried going doing this

Project -> Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional dependencies

Usually, the lines that would work are

sfml-system-d.lib
sfml-window-d.lib
...

I tried doing $(ProjectDir)valid path\\ sfml-files.lib but this gives me the linker error, saying that It could not find the file.

If I simply move the .dlls into a folder without doing anything, the code would compile and link fine. But when it runs, Windows gives me a pop-up box with the same error message.

Here is how it currently looks

Looks really messy, I just want to be able to move them into dependencies like how src contains the source files.

How can I achieve this?

As it is now, it works perfectly fine. The issue only occurs when I try to create a new folder.

I hope I have covered the important information required for a good answer, If not please let me know what more I should add

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2019
• Currently running 64-bit platform with Debug configuration. Hence the -d suffix

Answer 1

You could create a path environment for your specified directory, which is like drescherjm's suggestion. The steps:

1. Right-click “This PC” -> “Properties”-> “Advance System settings”
2. Click “Environment Variables”
3. In the System Variables group, edit “Path”
4. Add your directory, for example: ”D:\\ SFML-2.5.1\\bin”
5. Restart your visual studio and re-open your project

Answer 2

The easier solution might be to put them in the x64 subdirectory. This allows you to have various builds side by side (x86/x64, debug/release).

Since this x64 directory is where the EXE is located, it is the first directory searched for DLL's. It will take precedence over the Path solution suggested in the other answer. The Path directories are searched last of all.