mingw32 compiler giving error with -lcrypt

Question

I have been trying to make my crack.c code work on my Windows 10 laptop. The code runs on CS50 IDE (online IDE) without any errors. However, when I try to compile the code on my laptop using mingw32 on command line, the compiler is giving me an error:

 c:/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/5.3.0/../../../../mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot 
 find -lcrypt collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status

The code uses crypt() from the Linux C library. I tried to link the compiler to this by -lcrypt but apparently it does not exist.

How to solve this issue?

Answer 1

MinGW doesn't generally come with libcrypt. You'll have to either find a Windows version of the static library (I don't know of one), or alternatively, you can include the source code for crypt(3) in your project.

This version of crypt.c has worked for me in the past. (Code is in the public domain). It's a fairly old version, but it suffices.

In the event the link rots away, a simple web search should yield several examples, as the source is widely available, with varying levels of licensing.