Compiling FreeType to DLL (as opposed to static library)

If you're ok with an old version (march 2008), you can go to FreeType for Windows page, download the latest Binaries package, open the .ZIP, and extract FreeType6.dll from the bin directory. Just rename it appropriately.

If you need a more recent version, here is how you can compile the latest:

• download the latest source (2.4.6 as of today) from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/files/freetype2/

• open Visual Studio 2010, and load freetype.sln from the builds\win32\vc2010 directory.

• open the project config, and in the General tab, change Configuration Type to Dynamic Library (.dll)

• open the ftoption.h file, and add these lines (near the "DLL export compilation" remarks section for example):

  #define FT_EXPORT(x)  __declspec(dllexport) x
  #define FT_BASE(x)    __declspec(dllexport) x
  

• change the project compilation configuration to "Release".

• compile the project. You should now have a freetype246.dll in the objs\win32\vc2010 directory.

I'm going to bet that the problem is that your DLL project does not export any symbols, so while all the code is in there the addresses of the symbols are not in the exports table so nobody can get to them from the outside.

This question has a nice solution to export all the symbols in a .dll without having to manually list them.