g++ switch to not include own symbolic function names (and debugging data) -? - c++

Haven't found one, but is there a switch to exclude any debugging data as well as clear-text references to local (own) functions in generated code?
Simple example:
void setenv( char* in_str ) {
}
...gives me a readable "setenv" name in the executable, which is really not needed, unless it's an interpretive language.
Also in the executable - text names of variables, which is even stranger.
==========
EDIT:
So far tried Solaris strip, GNU strip, g++ -O0 and -s switches. The only way to remove the symbols in question was "strip --strip-all" from the object file (but not the executable), but then it won't link.
So it looks like Richard C is right, and this is indeed needed for lib* runtimes.

You can either use the gnu strip command line tool, or link with the gcc -s flag. Note though, the only benefit will be decreased file size. This part of the binary is only loaded into memory if you run the app in a debugger or you generate a stack trace. I prefer to use the strip command, because you can save the debug info separately and load if it you want to get a stack trace for some reason.
examples:
g++ -o myexecutable ...
strip --strip-unneeded myexecutable
or
g++ -s -o myexecutable a.o b.o c.o ...

Related

Debug symbols stability

I am compiling an application with -g option:
gcc -g -o main1 main.c
then I strip debug object from it:
objcopy --strip-debug main1
Let's assume that my main1 application will crash and I would like to use a core dump coredump1 to debug the problem.
Could I rebuild the source code once more
gcc -g -o main2 main.c
and extract debug symbols
objcopy --only-keep-debug main2 main2.debug
and use main2.debug to debug the coredump1?
Can I trust that debug symbols will be always aligned? Is it guaranteed by language standard or compiler requirement?
Will debug symbols match if my source code will contain strings based on macros like__DATE__ or __TIME__ ?
Will it work if I enable code optimization?
Will debug symbols match ...
Will it work if I enable code optimizaiton?
As others have commented, you should not rely on this, and instead always build with -g and separate debug symbols out before shipping the "final product".
That said, in practice this works for GCC1 with or without optimization, but doesn't work at all for Clang/LLVM (which gives you a practical reason not to depend on this).
1 Or at least it did last time I tried this for several non-trivial binaries a few years ago.
Note that maintaining this property requires active effort from the compiler developers and thus can be broken as violations are introduced, noticed and fixed.

Fatal error in reader: makefile, unexpected end of line seen [duplicate]

I am having some issues with a makefile I am creating for a school project. I am compiling and assembling a C file and a SPARC assembly file (respectively) and linking them. I'm working in a Unix environment. Here is the makefile:
proj09.exe: proj09.driver.o proj09.support.o
<tab>gcc -Wall proj09.driver.o proj09.support.o -o proj09.exe
proj09.driver.o: proj09.driver.c /user/cse320/Projects/project09.support.h
<tab>gcc -Wall -c proj09.driver.c /user/cse320/Projects/project09.support.h
proj09.support.o: proj09.support.s
<tab>gcc -Wall proj09.support.s
When I try to make it, though, I get a reader error, specifically:
"Fatal error in reader: proj09.makefile, line 2: Unexpected end of line seen"
Now I know that usually this means that something is formatted incorrectly, but I have no idea what it could be in this case. Also, I am not 100% sure that this is the correct code for the makefile (specifically the assembling of my support.s file, and the linking of both files). I apologize if this is a repeat question, I looked through the archives beforehand and couldn't find anything of use. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: I don't see why this would make a difference, but I am using gedit to actually write the code and then transferring the files into SSH for linking.
As Joachim told you, the lines should be indented by tab, not by spaces, so the second line should look like:
[TAB]gcc -Wall proj09.driver.o proj09.support.o -o proj09.exe[NEWLINE]
where [TAB] means TAB character.
Also there shouldn't be any spaces after the command. That's why I've put [NEWLINE] char.
Aside from the spaces and tabs, this doesn't generate an object file, shouldn't even compile (unless it has main()):
gcc -Wall proj09.support.s
You should use -c here too:
gcc -Wall -c proj09.support.s
Note: if you're working on Unix/Linux lose the .exe

NVCC attempting to link unnecessary objects

I have a project that I'm working on making run with CUDA. For various reasons, it needs to compile an executable either with or without GTK support, without recompiling all of the associated files. Under C, I accomplished this by compiling a base version of the objects to *.o and a GTK version of the objects to *.gtk.o. Thus, I can link to that library and if it needs to use GTK it will pull in those functions (and their requirements); if it doesn't it won't touch those objects.
Converting to nvcc has caused some issues: it works in either always or never GTK mode; but if I compile the libraries with the additional GTK objects, it refuses to ignore them and link a GTKless executable. (It fails with errors about being unable to find the cairo functions I call.)
I'm guessing that nvcc is linking to (at least one of) its helper functions embedded in the object, which is causing the linker to resolve the entire object.
Running ar d <lib> <objects.gtk.o> to manually strip them from the library will "fix" the problem, so there isn't a real dependency there.
I'm compiling/linking with
/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc --compiler-options -Wall --compiler-options -pipe
-rdc=true -O0 -g -G -I inc -I inc/ext -arch compute_20 -o program
program.cu obs/external.o libs/base.a libs/extra.a libs/core.a -lm
How can I get nvcc to ignore the unneeded objects?
How can I get nvcc to ignore the unneeded objects?
Before you can achieve that, you need to understand which symbol is causing the *.gtk.o objects to be pulled in from the library when they shouldn't be.
The way to do that is to run link with -Wl,--print-map, and look for linker messages such as:
Archive member included because of file (symbol)
libfoo.a(foo.o) main.o (foo)
Above, main.o referenced foo, which is defined in libfoo.a(foo.o), which caused foo.o to be pulled in into the main binary.
Once you know which symbols cause xxxx.gtk.o to be pulled into the link, searching the web and/or NVidia documentation may reveal a way to get rid of them.

How to make 64 shared 64-bit linux compatible library (*.so), for C++ code

My requirement is to work on some interface .h files. Right now I have .h and .cpp/.cc files in my project.
I need to compile it into shared 64-bit linux compatible library (*.so), using NetBeans/ Eclipse on Linux Fedora.
Since the GCC C++ ABI conventions did slightly change (in particular because of C++ standard libraries evolution, or name mangling convention) from one GCC version to the next (e.g. from g++-4.4 to g++-4.6) your shared library may be dependent upon the version of g++ used to build it
(In practice, the changes are often small inside g++, so you might be non affected)
If you want a symbol to be publicly accessible with dlsym you should preferably declare it extern "C" in your header files (otherwise you should mangle its name).
Regarding how to make a shared library, read documentation like Program Library Howto.
See also this question
And I suggest building your shared libraries with ordinary command-line tools (eg Makefile-s). Don't depend upon a complex IDE like NetBeans/ Eclipse to build them (they are invoking command-line utilities anyway).
If you are compiling a library from the 3 C++ source files called a.cc, b.cc, and c.cc respectively;
g++ -fpic -Wall -c a.cc
g++ -fpic -Wall -c b.cc
g++ -fpic -Wall -c c.cc
g++ -shared -Wl,-soname,libmylib.so.0 -o libmylib.so.0.0.0 a.o b.o c.o
Then you install the library using ldconfig, see man 8 ldconfig
you can then compile the program that uses the libary as follows (but be sure to prefix extern "C" before the class declarations in the header files included in the source code using the library.)
g++ -o myprog main.cc -lmylib
I have tried these compile options with my own sample code, and have been successful.
Basically What is covered in Shared Libraries applies to C++, just replace gcc with g++.
The theory behind all of this is;
Libraries are loaded dynamically when the program is first loaded, as can be confirmed by doing a system call trace on a running program, e.g. strace -o trace.txt ls which will dump a list of the system calls that the program made during execution into a file called trace.txt. At the top of the file you will see that the program (in this case ls) had indeed mmapped all the library's into memory.
Since libraries are loaded dynamically, it is unknown at link time where the library code will exist in the program's virtual address space during run time. Therefore library code must be compiled using position independent code - Hence the -fpic option which tells the translation stage to generate assembly code that has been coded with position independent code in mind. If you tell gcc/g++ to stop after the translation stage, with the -S (upper case S) option, and then look at resulting '.s' file, once with the -fpic option, and once without, you will see the difference (i.e. the dynamic code has #GOTPCREL and #PLT, at least on x86_64).
The linker, of course must be told to link all the ELF relocatatable object types into executable code suitable for use as a Linux shared library.

How do I source/link external functions in C or C++?

EDIT: I suppose I should clarify, in case it matters. I am on a AIX Unix box, so I am using VAC compilers - no gnu compilers.
End edit
I am pretty rusty in C/C++, so forgive me if this is a simple question.
I would like to take common functions out of a few of my C programs and put them in shared libraries or shared objects. If I was doing this in perl I would put my subs in a perl module and use that module when needed.
For the sake of an example, let's say I have this function:
int giveInteger()
{
return 1034;
}
Obviously this is not a real world example, but if I wanted to share that function, how would I proceed?
I'm pretty sure I have 2 options:
Put my shared function in a file, and have it compile with my main program at compile time. If I ever make changes to my shared function, I would have to recompile my main program.
Put my shared function in a file, and compile it as a shared library (if I have my terms correct), and have my main program link to that shared library. Any changes I make to my shared library (after compiling it) would be integrated into my main program at runtime without re-compiling my main program.
Am I correct on that thinking?
If so, how can I complish either/both of those methods? I've searched a lot and I seem to find information how how I could have my own program link to someone else's shared library, but not how to create my own shared functions and compile them in a way I can use them in my own program.
Thanks so much!
Brian
EDIT: Conclusion
Thanks everyone for your help! I thought I would add to this post what is working for me (for dynamic shared libraries on AIX) so that others can benefit:
I compile my shared functions:
xlc -c sharedFunctions.c -o sharedFunctions.o
Then make it a shared object:
xlc -qmkshrobj -qexpfile=exportlist sharedFunctions.o
xlc -G -o libsharedFunctions.so sharedFunctions.o -bE:exportlist
Then link it another program:
xlc -brtl -o mainProgram mainProgram.c -L. -lsharedFunctions
And another comment helped me find this link, which also helped:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/comphelp/v7v91/topic/com.ibm.vacpp7a.doc/proguide/ref/compile_library.htm
Thanks again to all who helped me out!
Yeah you are correct. The first is called a static library, while the second is called a shared library, because the code is not bound to the executable at compile time, but everytime again when your program is loaded.
Static library
Compile your library's code as follows:
gcc -c *.c
The -c tells the program not to link the object file, but just leaves you with object files for each .c file that was compiled. Now, archive them into one static library:
ar rcs libmystuff.a *.o
man ar will tell you what the rcs options mean. Now, libmystuff.a is a archive file (you can open it with some zip-file viewers) which contain those object files, together with an index of symbols for each object file. You can link it to your program:
gcc *.c libmystuff.a -o myprogram
Now, your program is ready. Note that the order of where the static libraries appear in the command matter. See my Link order answer.
Shared library
For a shared library, you will create your library with
gcc -shared -o libmystuff.so *.c
That's all it takes, libmystuff.so is now a shared object file. If you want to link a program to it, you have to put it into a directory that is listed in the /etc/ld.so.conf file, or that is given by the -L switch to GCC, or listed in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. When linking, you cut the lib prefix and .so suffix from the library name you tell gcc.
gcc -L. -lmystuff *.c -o myprogram
Internally, gcc will just pass your arguments to the GNU linker. You can see what arguments it pass using the -### option: Gcc will print the exact arguments given to each sub process.
For details about the linking process (how some stuff is done internally), view my Linux GCC linker answer.
You've got a third option. In general, your C++ compiler should be able to link C routines. The necessary options may vary from compiler to compiler, so R your fine M, but basically, you should be able to compile with g++ as here:
$ g++ -o myapp myapp.cpp myfunc.c giveint.c
... or compile separately
$ gcc -c myfunc.c
$ gcc -c giveint.c
$ g++ -c myapp.cpp
$ g++ -o myapp myapp.o myfunc.o
You also need to include your declaration of the functions; you do that in C++ as
extern "C" {
int myfunc(int,int);
int giveInterger(void);
}
You need to distinguish between recompiling and relinking.
If you put giveInteger() into a separate (archive) library, and then modify it later, you'll (obviously) need to recompile the source file in which it is defined, and relink all programs that use it; but you will not need to recompile such programs [1].
For a shared library, you'll need to recompile and relink the library; but you will not have to relink or recompile any of the programs which use it.
Building C++ shared libraries on AIX used to be complicated; you needed to use makeC++SharedLib shell script. But with VAC 5.0 and 6.0 it became quite easy. I believe all you need to do is [2]:
xlC -G -o shr.o giveInteger.cc
xlC -o myapp main.cc shr.o
[1] If you write correct Makefile (which is recommended practice), all of this will happen automatically when you type make.
[2] There is a certain feature of AIX which may complicate matters: by default shared libraries are loaded into memory, and "stick" there until subsequent reboot. So you may rebuild the shr.o, rerun the program, and observe "old" version of the library being executed. To prevent this, a common practice is to make shr.o world-unreadable:
chmod 0750 shr.o