I'm taking over maintenance and development on a Windows application written in C++. Unfortunately I have to do it without any help from the previous developer, and without a full copy of his build directory. I seem to have all the sources, but _not_ the 3rd-party libraries. 

I'm trying to build the application in Visual Studio 2010 (this is a very old program), and I'm currently stumped by the absence of fbclient.lib from my project. 

I found a comment that seems to imply the source code was using Firebird 2.5.2. 

I downloaded and installed Firebird 2.5.4 (couldn't find any links to older 2.5 versions) and did a client-only install. It gave me a fbclient.dll, but not the corresponding *.lib. I have scoured the Firebird web site and have not been able to find the *.lib file that I need.

I am comfortable with C++, but I am not very familiar with Visual Studio (in particular) or Windows development (in general). Is the *.lib just a bunch of stubs that forward to the *.dll entry points? Can it be generated automatically somehow? Or does this mean the previous developer has left me without some code I need?

Any help you can give me will be very much appreciated.

=thom