"Permission denied collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status" Error when using #include<openssl/evp.h> in VSCode

[Batres3]

So I installed OpenSSL directly following the instructions in the install.txt file you get when cloning the git repository. It installed it seemingly with no issues and it is located in C:/Program Files/OpenSSL and C:/Program Files(x86)/OpenSSL. Inside each of those there are 4 folders: bin, html, include, lib.

In VSCode I'm using the code runner extension with the following command:

g++ -I "C:/Users/Batres/vcpkg/installed/x86-windows/include" "C:/Program Files/OpenSSL/include" simple_functions.cpp -o simple_functions 

the "C:/Users/Batres/vcpkg/installed/x86-windows/include" is a different library called XTensor, which works completely fine as I have tested the code without OpenSSL and it outputs the correct results with no problem.

I have also tried these commands, all yeilding the same error. I have also tried running all the same commands through a terminal with admin priviliges and it gives the same error. I even copied the folder to a different directory inside my /Documents/ folder and it still didn't help. My compiler is mingw and I'm on Windows 11.

g++ -I "C:/Users/Batres/vcpkg/installed/x86-windows/include" "C:/Program Files (x86)/OpenSSL/include" simple_functions.cpp -o simple_functions 

and

g++ -I "C:/Users/Batres/vcpkg/installed/x86-windows/include" -L "C:/Program Files/OpenSSL/lib" simple_functions.cpp -o simple_functions -lssl 

This last one returns a different error. Insted of being acces denied it seems like none of the functions or variables that I call inside my code are recognised, so these are the errors: undefined reference to `EVP_MD_CTX_new', or any other functions or variables I call, my code is the following:

#include <cmath>
#include <iomanip>
#include <cstddef>
#include "xtensor.hpp"
#include <functional>
#include <string>
#include <typeinfo>
#include <vector>
#include <regex>
#include <array>
#include <algorithm>
#include <openssl/sha.h>
#include <openssl/evp.h>

/*
def hash_string(string):
    # Truncating at 16 bytes for cleanliness
    hasher = hashlib.sha256(string.encode())
    return hasher.hexdigest()[:16]
    */
std::string hash_string(std::string string) {
    // Truncating at 16 bytes for cleanliness
    std::array<unsigned char, SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH> hash;
    std::array<unsigned char, SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH>::iterator it;

    EVP_MD_CTX* ctx = EVP_MD_CTX_new();
    EVP_DigestInit_ex(ctx, EVP_sha256(), NULL);
    EVP_DigestUpdate(ctx, string.c_str(), string.size());
    EVP_DigestFinal_ex(ctx, hash.data(), NULL);

    // Convert the hash to a hexadecimal string
    std::stringstream ss;
    for (it = hash.begin(); it != hash.end(); it++) {
        ss << std::hex << std::setw(2) << std::setfill('0') << static_cast<int>(*it);
    }
    return ss.str().substr(0, 16);
}

int main(){
    double a = gen_choose(2,5);
    std::string input = "Hello, world!";
    std::string output = hash_string(input);
    std::cout << std::setprecision(16) << output << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Ignore all the other #includes, they are for different functions that work with no issue. As you can probably see I have some python code commented above my C++ code. Thats simply because it's a function I tried transalting using ChatGPT, but that's not relevant to the error.
The weird thing is that even though it says access denied when compliling, Intellisense can acess the files just fine, I can right click on the functions and "Go to Definition" and it takes me to my C:/Program Files/OpenSSL/include/openssl/ folder.

If anyone knows how to fix the error I would be very thankful.

[t8m]

g++ -I "C:/Users/Batres/vcpkg/installed/x86-windows/include" "C:/Program Files/OpenSSL/include" simple_functions.cpp -o simple_functions 

This looks incorrect - you need to duplicate the -I before each include directory. Also this command is actually directly compiling and linking, so you'll also need the -L option to find the libcrypto/libssl. Also you need to use -lcrypto for EVP functions and not -lssl.