undefined reference to `openvdb::v7_2::initialize()'

[Micrufun]

On Linux, I'm building with OpenVDB by:

https://www.openvdb.org/documentation/doxygen/build.html#buildUsingOpenVDB

Like:

    list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "/usr/local/lib64/cmake/OpenVDB/")
    find_package(OpenVDB REQUIRED)

    target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC
        OpenVDB::openvdb
    )

I've built OpenVDB by checking out the tag v7.2.3. I've also defined the macros by CMake:

	add_compile_definitions(OPENVDB_7_ABI_COMPATIBLE)

Also by C++:

// https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb/issues/139
#define OPENVDB_7_ABI_COMPATIBLE
#include <openvdb/openvdb.h>

Error

But I'm receiving this linker error when building my project:

undefined reference to `openvdb::v7_2::initialize()'

A this line of C++ code:

    openvdb::FloatGrid::Ptr mesh_to_grid(
        const Contour &mesh, const openvdb::math::Transform &tr = {}, float exteriorBandWidth = 3.0f, float interiorBandWidth = 3.0f, int flags = 0)
    {
        openvdb::initialize(); // ***** At this line the linker error is thrown.
        return openvdb::tools::meshToVolume<openvdb::FloatGrid>(
            ContourDataAdapter{mesh}, tr, exteriorBandWidth, interiorBandWidth,
            flags);
    }

Version 8

I tried checking out v8.1.0 tag when building OpenVDB. But eventually a similar error is thrown:

undefined reference to `openvdb::v8_1::initialize()'

I ran out of options to debug this error. Can anybody help?

Note

Previously, I was linking to OpenVDB on a different machine just fine. But, installing dependencies and building on a new Linux machine throws the above errors.

Update

Investigating CMake log indicates that linker is not able to link to any library. Including tbb, openvdb, ...

It may be a general problem. It's not specifically related to OpenVDB.

A similar problem is described here:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/11112318

Linker cannot find symbols, but libraries are read and symbols exist

Root cause might be:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11112318/linker-cannot-find-symbols-but-libraries-are-read-and-symbols-exist#comment75498543_11112318

Some recent distributions apparently default to using the --as-needed linker flag, which enforces that the program's object files come before the dynamic libraries. If that flag is passed, the linker will not link to libraries that are not actually needed by the executable (and it detects this from left to right).

[Megidd]

Fix 🔧

The cause of the linker errors was this statement:

if(LINUX)

The fix was to replace it with this:

if(UNIX AND NOT APPLE)

This commit fixes the problem:

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40152725/3405291

Strangely, CMake wasn't complaining about anything and just throwing random linker errors.

[Idclip]

@Megidd was this in our CMake? I can't see this code anywhere

[Megidd]

@Idclip No worries, it was not in OpenVDB code :)

[astitvaveergarg]

wait , so where is it ?

[Megidd]

@astitvaveergarg It was inside my own code which was using OpenVDB as a dependency.