I'm trying to build some example c++ code that use boost library. I use this as reference example of static linking.
And everything is fine when I build with dynamic libs.
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/main.o src/main.cpp
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/ThreadExample.o src/ThreadExample.cpp
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/Utils.o src/Utils.cpp
g++ src/main.o src/ThreadExample.o src/Utils.o -lboost_thread -lboost_filesystem -lboost_system -lboost_timer -o ThreadExampleBinary
But when I use static libs I get lots of undefined reference errors:
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/main.o src/main.cpp
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/ThreadExample.o src/ThreadExample.cpp
g++ -Wall -std=c++0x -O3 -Wfatal-errors -I/usr/include/boost/include -c -o src/Utils.o src/Utils.cpp
g++ -static src/main.o src/ThreadExample.o src/Utils.o -lboost_thread -lboost_filesystem -lboost_system -lboost_timer -o ThreadExampleBinary
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o): In function `boost::timer::cpu_timer::start()':
(.text+0x7fd): undefined reference to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o): In function `boost::timer::cpu_timer::stop()':
(.text+0x94c): undefined reference to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o): In function `boost::timer::cpu_timer::elapsed() const':
(.text+0xa59): undefined reference to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o): In function `boost::timer::cpu_timer::resume()':
(.text+0xb60): undefined reference to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o): In function `boost::timer::auto_cpu_timer::auto_cpu_timer(std::ostream&, short)':
(.text+0xca5): undefined reference to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_timer.a(cpu_timer.o):(.text+0xd4e): more undefined references to `boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()' follow
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [ThreadExampleBinary] Error 1
Seems this can be fixed adding additional -lboost_chrono library.
But why it works in dinamic setting?
With static linking, you have to also statically link to any libraries depended on by the libraries you are linking to.
The difference is that shared libraries have an entry in the ELF header, called NEEDED that lists other shared libraries that are to be included when you link in this one.
You can see them with this command:
$ objdump -p /usr/lib/libboost_timer.so | grep NEEDED
NEEDED libboost_chrono.so.1.60.0
NEEDED libboost_system.so.1.60.0
NEEDED librt.so.1
NEEDED libstdc++.so.6
NEEDED libgcc_s.so.1
NEEDED libc.so.6
But for static libraries there is no such system, as they are simply collection of object files.
It is worth noting that the NEEDED entry in the shared objects are entirely optional, and if they are not available, then they will behave exactly like the static ones. But most shared libraries include them.
Many libraries use the pkg-config infrastructure to provide the full command line needed, but AFAIK boost is not one of them.
How to automate this process? Well, you do not. You just include what is needed and follow the linker errors to discover further needs.
You can find which static library includes a symbol with something like:
$ nm --print-file-name --defined-only --demangle /usr/lib/*.a 2> /dev/null | \
grep -q 'boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()'
/usr/lib/libboost_chrono.a:chrono.o:0000000000000090 T boost::chrono::steady_clock::now()
But why it works in dinamic setting?
Most of my make files have the following notes (from when I found the answer back when I needed it ... sorry, I don't know where I found it.)
Note - when a build using '-l' finds the .so version of that library (so - shared object) and the same .a archive is also there, g++ prefers the .so over the .a.
However, you can still achieve static link by fully specifying the path to .a.
Example:
$(CC) $(CC_FLAGS) $< /usr/local/lib/libboost_chrono.a -o $# ...
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sometimes, archive code refers to symbols in yet another archive.
i.e. -lyyy_i686 uses some function from -lxxx_i686, and xxx was listed first in the build command. It is possible that a symbol might remain unresolved and the linker fails.
When this happens, try adding xxx a second time to the end of the archive list
from: -lxxx_i686 -lyyy_i686 -lrt -pthread
becomes -lxxx_i686 -lyyy_i686 -lrt -pthread -lxxx_i686
^^^^^^^^^_____________________________^^^^^^^^^^
The preceeding presumes only .a libraries are findable (no xxx.so)
Another alternative, you can command the linker to search an archive multiple times
-lyyy_i686 -lrt -pthread -(-lxxx_i686-)
tell gcc to link this library as many times as needed __^^__________^^
Again, only .a is findable
Finally, if you choose to link with the .so, note that this does not pull in the entire lib into the current build target. Instead, at runtime, the .so is loaded into memory, if it is not already there. This happens after the program starts. For most applications, this is considered a 'small' start-up performance hit as the program adjusts its memory map (automagically behind the scenes). I believe I once found that the app itself can control when to load the .so.
The use of .so pulls in the entire library to memory (if not already installed). Thus, there would not be any missing symbols, in my xxx vs yyy scenario above, the .so pulls all the symbols, whether used or not.
And once again, when trying to load xxx using "-lxxx_i686", the linker prefers to pull in libxxx_i686.so even when the libxxx_i686.a is in the same directory.
Related
I have a source file, mything.cpp, and a library that was provided to me as notmine.h and notmine.a.
I need to produce a shared object that has all my stuff from mything.cpp and all the stuff from somelib.a. Here is what I did on the command line:
g++ -fpic -c -o mything.o mything.cpp
g++ -shared -o mything.so mything.o notmine.a
However, when I look at the final mything.so using ldd I see that it has a dependency on libnotmine.so, and when I check nm, I see that all the symbols that should have been supplied by notmine.a are undefined.
What am I doing wrong?
More details: notmine.a is actually liblua.a that I built locally. I think g++ might be getting confused because there is a liblua.so in the system directories
Finally figured it out. There are two options. The simpler is to use:
g++ -fpic -c -o mything.o mything.cpp
g++ -shared -o mything.so mything.o -L. -l:notmine.a
Alternatively, you can tell the linker you want to treat the .a as a bunch of object files with
g++ -fpic -c -o mything.o mything.cpp
g++ -shared -o mything.so mything.o -Wl,--whole_archive notmine.a -Wl,--no-whole-archive
The --Wl,-no-whole-archive is to prevent that flag from messing up the other steps the linker does with the system libraries
I'm trying to compile my project and I use the lib ncurse. And I've got some errors when compiler links files.
Here is my flags line in Makefile:
-W -Wall -Werror -Wextra -lncurses
I've included ncurses.h
Some layouts :
prompt$> dpkg -S curses.h
libslang2-dev:amd64: /usr/include/slcurses.h
libncurses5-dev: /usr/include/ncurses.h
libncurses5-dev: /usr/include/curses.h
prompt$> dpkg -L libncurses5-dev | grep .so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurses.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmenu.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libform.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpanel.s
And here are my erros :
gcc -W -Wall -Werror -Wextra -I./Includes/. -lncurses -o Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.o -c Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.c
./Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.o: In function `ncruses_destroy':
ncurses_init.c:(.text+0x5): undefined reference to `endwin'
./Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.o: In function `ncurses_write_line':
ncurses_init.c:(.text+0xc5): undefined reference to `mvwprintw'
./Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.o: In function `ncurses_init':
ncurses_init.c:(.text+0xee): undefined reference to `initscr'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Thanks a lot
You need to change your makefile so that the -lncurses directive comes after your object code on the gcc command line, i.e. it needs to generate the command:
gcc -W -Wall -Werror -Wextra -I./Includes/. -o Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.o -c Sources/NCurses/ncurses_init.c -lncurses
This is because object files and libraries are linked in order in a single pass.
In C++ , I fixed it just by linking the ncurses library .
Here is the command :
g++ main.cpp -lncurses
I got flags to correct order by using LDLIBS variable:
ifndef PKG_CONFIG
PKG_CONFIG=pkg-config
endif
CFLAGS+=-std=c99 -pedantic -Wall
LDLIBS=$(shell $(PKG_CONFIG) --libs ncurses)
man gcc | grep -A10 "\-l library"
-l library
Search the library named library when linking. (The second alternative with the library as a separate argument is only for POSIX
compliance and is not recommended.)
It makes a difference where in the command you write this option; the linker searches and processes libraries and object files
in the order they are specified. Thus, foo.o -lz bar.o searches
library z after file foo.o but
before bar.o. If bar.o refers to functions in z, those functions may not be loaded.
I have a makefile project in which I include a few different libraries. One of them is the boost library which I statically link in order to make my program portable. This is how my makefile command looks like:
g++ -O0 -g test.cpp testObject.o -pthread -I/home/user/devel/lmx-sdk-4.7.1/include/ -L/home/user/devel/lmx-sdk-4.7.1/linux_x64 -llmxclient -lrt -ldl -lboost_filesystem -lboost_system -static -static-libgcc -o $#
I have also linked lmx-sdk library to my project in order to use the licensing functionality; however, it seems to be that lmx-sdk doesn't seem to like static link as it gives an error "Using 'dlopen' in statically linked applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc version used for linking".
How can I make it possible to link some libraries statically and the other ones dynamically ?
Thanks in advance
P.S. I have checked some of similar topics and tried a few methods which didn't work out for me.
Using -Wl,-Bdynamic and -Wl,-Bstatic instead of just using -Bdynamic and -Bstatic solved the problem.
The full link line looks like this now:
g++ -O0 -g test.cpp testObject.o -pthread -Bdynamic -I/home/user/devel/lmx-sdk-4.7.1/include/ -L/home/user/devel/lmx-sdk-4.7.1/linux_x64 -llmxclient -lrt -ldl -Wl,-Bstatic -lboost_filesystem -lboost_system -o $#
You can use -Bstatic to statically link what comes after it, then -Bdynamic to do the opposite. As many times as you need on the command line.
This is my first time trying to make a simple library. I worked in Ubuntu 12.04 with g++ 4.6.3. Here is the problem:
[[mylib.cpp]]
#include<sqlite3.h>
void Mylib::blahblah() {...}
void Mylib::evenmoreblah() {...}
...
[[mylib.h]]
#include <...>
class Mylib {
...
};
Then I made the lib by:
gcc -c -Wall -fpic mylib.cpp
gcc -shared -o libmylib.so mylib.o
I used the library in a single test.cpp which contains only the main(). I put libmylib.so in ./libdir, and compiled by using:
g++ -g test.cpp -o test -lpthread -L/usr/local/lib -lsqlite3 -L./libdir -lmylib
The error I got:
./libdir/libmylib.so: undefined reference to `sqlite3_close'
./libdir/libmylib.so: undefined reference to `sqlite3_exec'
./libdir/libmylib.so: undefined reference to `sqlite3_free'
./libdir/libmylib.so: undefined reference to `sqlite3_open'
You could link -lsqlite3 into your shared library with
gcc -shared mylib.o -o libmylib.so -lsqlite3
If you do that, you don't need to explicitly link -lsqlite3 to your program, but that won't harm.
and the order of linking arguments for your program is important:
g++ -Wall -g test.cpp -o mytest \
-L./libdir -lmylib -L/usr/local/lib -lsqlite3 -lpthread
it should go from higher-level libraries to lower-level (i.e. system) ones. And don't forget -Wall to get almost all warnings from the compiler, which is very useful.
Read the Program Library HowTo.
PS. Don't call your program test which is a shell builtin (and the standard /usr/bin/test). Use some other name.
If your library make references to sqlite3, you should link sqlite after linking your library :
g++ -g test.cpp -o test -lpthread -L/usr/local/lib -L./libdir -lmylib -lsqlite3
Otherwise ld won't find anything useful in libsqlite3 before linking your library and won't be able to find the requested symbols after that.
Since your library uses sqlite3, you need to add that AFTER your own library in the linker command. I think you could add it to the linking of your shared library too, but not certain.
The linker resolves libraries and their references in the order you list them, so the order is important.
I'm writing a small C program that uses librt. I'm quite surprised that the program won't compile if I place the link flag at the start instead of at the end:
At the moment, to compile the program I do:
gcc -o prog prog.c -lrt -std=gnu99
If I were to do the following, it will fail to find the functions in librt:
gcc -std=gnu99 -lrt -o prog prog.c
Yet, this works with other libraries. I found the issue when attempting to use a simple Makefile. make actually compiled prog.c without liking first (using -c flag) and then did the linking.
This is the Makefile:
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -std=gnu99
LIBS= -lrt
LDFLAGS := -lrt
prog: prog.o
$(CC) -o prog prog.c -lrt -std=gnu99
The output I would get when typing make would be:
gcc -std=gnu99 -c -o prog.o prog.c
gcc -lrt prog.o -o prog
prog.o: In function `main':
prog.c:(.text+0xe6): undefined reference to `clock_gettime'
prog.c:(.text+0x2fc): undefined reference to `clock_gettime'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [buff] Error 1
I have now crafted a Makefile that puts the linking at the end of the gcc line, however I'm puzzled why it doesn't work if the linking flag is at the start.
I would appreciate if anybody can explain this to me. Thanks.
As the linker processes each module (be it a library or a object file), it attempts to resolve each undefined symbol while potentially adding to its list of undefined symbols. When it gets to the end of the list of modules, it either has resolved all undefined symbols and is successful or it reports undefined symbols.
In your case, when it processed librt, it had no undefined symbols. Processing proc resulted in clock_gettime being an undefined symbol. gcc will not go back and look in librt for the undefined symbols.
For that reason, you should always have your code first, followed by your libraries, followed by platform provided libraries.
Hope this helps.
From the ld (the GNU linker) documentation (http://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/ld/Options.html#Options):
The linker will search an archive only once, at the location where it is specified on the command line. If the archive defines a symbol which was undefined in some object which appeared before the archive on the command line, the linker will include the appropriate file(s) from the archive. However, an undefined symbol in an object appearing later on the command line will not cause the linker to search the archive again.
So if you specify the library too early, the linker will scan it, but not find anything of interest. Then the linker moves on to the object file produced by the compiler and finds references that need to be resolved, but it has already scanned the library and won't bother looking there again.