Software developer with 25 years experience but trying to learn C for the first time. Need kind/patient Windows C developer to provide tuition to compile my first simple DLL - the sample plugin published for the HexChat IRC client software. Steps completed successfully so far:
Installed HexChat 64bit Windows IRC client application from: https://hexchat.github.io/downloads.html
Created "Empty C++ Project" in Visual Studio 2019.
Set project configuration to "x64".
Right-clicked project, clicked "Properties" and set "Configuration Type" to "Dynamic Library (.dll)".
Added "hexchat-plugin.h" file from https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/blob/master/src/common/hexchat-plugin.h
Created "plugin.c" file exactly from the source code shown at: https://hexchat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html
Added new "Module-Definition File (.def)" as described at: https://hexchat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html#plugins-on-windows-win32
See screenshots attached to this PPH project.
Project compiles, but linker fails to resolve four external symbols: LNK2019 unresolved external symbol hexchat_hook_print referenced in function hexchat_plugin_init ...
Normally I would point the VS project to a lib file containing those symbols but I don't know how or if I need to do this when compiling a HexChat plugin. I do not have sufficient knowledge to compile HexChat itself from source if that is the answer.
Looking for someone to provide written instructions/knowledge to permit me to successfully compile the above simple DLL such that it is recognized and successfully invoked by the HexChat application.