I'm writing a cross-platform application which is not GNU GPL compatible. The major problem I'm currently facing is that the application is linked dynamically with glibc and libstdc++, and almost every new major update to the libraries are not backwards compatible. Hence, random crashes are seen in my application.
As a workaround, I distribute binaries of my application compiled on several different systems (with different C/C++ runtime versions). But I want to do without this. So my question is, keeping licensing and everything in mind, can I link against glibc and libstdc++ statically? Also, will this cause issues with rtld?
You don't need to.
Copy the original libraries you linked against to a directory (../lib in this example) in your application folder.
Like:
my_app_install_path
.bin
lib
documentation
Rename you app for something like app.bin. Substitute your app for a little shell script that sets the enviroment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the library path (and concatenate the previous LD_LIBRARY_PATH contents, if any). Now ld should be able to find the dynamic libraries you linked against and you don't need to compile them statically to your executable.
Remember to comply with the LGPL adding the given attribution to the libraries and pointing in the documentation where the source can be downloaded.
glibc is under the LGPL. Under section 6. of LGPL 2.1, you can distribute your program linked to the library provided you comply with one of five options. The first is to provide the source code of the library, along with the object code (source is optional, not required) of your own program, so it can be relinked with the library. You can alternatively provide a written offer of the same. Your own code does not have to be under the LGPL, and you don't have to release source.
libstdc++ is under the GPL, but with a major exception. You can basically just distribute under the license of your choice without providing source for either your own code or libstdc++. The only condition is that you compile normally, without e.g. proprietary modifications or plugins to GCC.
IANAL, and you should consider consulting one if you need real legal advice.
Specifying the option -static-libgcc to the linker would cause it to link against a static version of the C library, if available on the system. Otherwise it is ignored.
I must question what the heck you are doing with the poor library functions?
I have some cross platform software as well. It runs fine on Linux systems of all sorts. Build with the oldest version of software that you want to support. The glibc and libstdc++ libraries are really very backward compatible.
I have built on CentOS 4 and run it on RHEL 6 beta. No problems.
I can build on stable Debian and run it on testing.
Now, I do sometimes have trouble with some libraries if I try to build on, say old Debian and try to run it on CentOS 5.4. That is usually due to distribution configuration choices that are different, like choosing threading or non-threading.
Related
I have a target system Astra Linux Smolensk, which has access to very outdated packages with GCC 6 among them. It does not support C++17, which is required for some very useful 3rd party libraries and language features. At some point I am considering a possibility of using concepts from 20 standard. But there is no easy way to achieve that.
Basically, I see 2 ways:
Compile needed version of GCC by myself and have a custom version of Astra Linux for building with additional packages (which is not a good option since we have restrictions for system modification). I am about to try out this option, but it is not the subject of this question.
Cross-compile with latest GCC on Ubuntu using a toolchain.
So, what do I need in order to create a toolchain for a custom version of Linux? The only thing I am sure of is the Linux Core version. Can I use an existing Linux toolchain or do I have to export system libraries and create a custom toolchain?
Here I found out some tools that seem to be helpful. For instance:
Buildroot
Buildroot is a complete build system based on the Linux kernel configuration system and supports a wide range of target architectures. It generates root file system images ready to be written to flash. In addition to having a huge number of packages which can be compiled into the image, it also generates a cross toolchain to build those packages from source. Even if you don't want to use buildroot for your root filesystem, it is a useful tool for generating a toolchain. Buildroot supports uClibc-ng, glibc and musl.
I wonder if it does what I need and can I use a latest GCC compiler with those generated toolchains.
I found similar questions:
How to build C++17 application in old linux distro with old stdlib and libc?
https://askubuntu.com/questions/162465/are-gcc-versions-tied-to-kernel-versions
How can I link to a specific glibc version?
Some clarification is needed:
The project relies heavily on a lot of 3rd party dependencies from the target linux's package repository. Moreover, I use dynamic .so modules that may be loaded both implicitly and explicitly.
Today with docker and modern CI/CD pipelines based on container, we don't rely on process compile very often as old days.
With the help of musl, we can even create universal Linux binaries with static linkage: We use all static libraries rather than dynamic libraries. Then we ship one executable file.
According to musl's doc, it needs
Linux kernel >=2.6.39
This is a very old version released around 2011, so even old Linux distro's can run our binaries.
Musl is widely used in many projects, especially in Rust projects, we provide Musl builds for users as conveniences.
Note that we may need to fix our codebase when using Musl, there are very slight differences with GNU libc, which we should be aware.
Say I have a C++ binary that was compiled with a version of gcc say 4.4.x, which is used on a client linux box.
If I want to upgrade my compiler to use a newer one, say 4.9.3 (because I want to use C++11):
What kind of things would need to be upgraded on the client box to run this new binary? (e.g. .so libraries)
And how would one find this out?
What kind of things would need to be upgraded on the client box to run this new binary?
You will need to ship two shared libraries with your application: libgcc_s and libstdc++. See https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/abi.html for more details.
You can ship these libraries in the same directory with your executables if you link using $ORIGIN. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/4742034/412080 for more details.
And how would one find this out?
Run ldd and readelf -d on your executables to see what libraries they need.
I'm guessing from the fact that you mention GCC 3.4 that your client system is running RedHat/CentOS/Scientific Linux 4 which is so old that even Red Hat ended support for it three years ago. If you were running any newer version then you would have been able to take advantage of the Developer Toolsets which include a modified version of GCC that statically links newer parts of the standard library into your binary so that it can run on legacy systems without newer glibc/libstdc++ runtimes.
There are two mechanisms to test compatibility of shared libraries:
The SONAME: a canonical name for the library that is used by the linker to reference the library. You can query the list of required libraries for every ELF object (executable or library) with the ldd command, and you need to do this recursively for each referenced library to get a full list of libraries needed.
The symbol version information. This is an additional constraint that allows adding functionality to existing libraries by introducing version requirements per symbol used -- a program only using symbols that have existed for ages will require a lower minimum version of the library than one that uses new functionality.
Both of these need to be fulfilled in order for the program to run.
The typical approach of Linux distributions is to keep a mapping of SONAME to package name (as multiple versions differing in SONAME can be installed concurrently), and a table of versioned symbols to the package revision these were introduced. The appropriate package development tools for your distribution should be able to create a list of dependency specifications that matches your program's requirements; if they fail to do so because symbols are unknown, it is likely that this version cannot be supported on that release of the distribution.
An alternative could be to link statically all libraries (notably libstdc++) other than the libc (and libm and libdl if you use them); then the produced ELF executable depends only of the libc; however, with ancient enough kernels or libc (on the target machine) even that might fail to work...
For details, read Drepper's paper: How To Write Shared Libraries
I am compiling a shared library using g++ on SUse Linux with cmake that depends on libicuuc.so and friends.
Suse has libicuuc.so, libicuuc.so.46 and libicuuc.so.46.1 in /usr/lib.
Now when I use ldd to list the dependencies of my library it tells me that it depends on libicuuc.so.46.
Since I want to distribute my library in binary form (it takes about 45 minutes to compile on a fast PC) this dependency is a problem. The target PCs have different versions of libicuuc.so.
What can I do so that my library depends on libicuuc.so and not libicuuc.so.46?
I tried to remove the so.46 versions in my /usr/lib folder before compiling but libicuuc.so depends on libicudata.so.46 so I keep that dependency on a 46 version what I try to avoid.
Read about external library versioning here.
What can I do so that my library depends on libicuuc.so and not libicuuc.so.46?
You can't do anything about that. The libicuuc.so that you have has SONAME set to libicuuc.so.46, and the linker dutifully records that dependency (as it should).
If developers release libicuuc.so.47, they would do so because the new library is not ABI-compatible with the old one (at least that's what they should do if they are not clueless).
If your library loaded libcuuc.so.47 (as you want it to), it would most likely crash due to the ABI incompatibility. Or worse: corrupt your end user's data. So achieving your desired result would get you into worse trouble than what you have now (not running is better than randomly crashing or corrupting data).
Update:
The libicuuc.so documentation explicitly states that "Binary compatibility is for versions that share the same major+minor number."
That means: you can't link a library compiled with version 4.6 (SONAME libicuuc.so.46) and expect it work with version 4.7.
You must either rebuild your library for each version of ICUUC, or distribute matching libicuuc.so.NN with your library (and hope that the user is not already using some other version of libicuuc).
Another possible alternative: statically link libicuuc.a into your library, and hide all of libicuuc.a symbols so they don't conflict with anything else. Note: this has licensing implications.
I'm writing an application that uses both Intel's TBB library, and an API from a company called Maplink, which also uses TBB. The problem is that both my application and the Maplink API want to load TBB.dll from the directory containing my application's binary. The version of TBB.dll that Maplink provided with their API differs from the one my application requires, and they can't both co-exist in the application's executable directory. Do I have any option here other than statically linking TBB into my application so that it doesn't try to load the wrong version of TBB.dll that the Maplink API is using?
In the real world, it is a bad idea to mix different versions of the same DLL. You should really try and get your platform aligned. It is not called package hell for nothing.
That being said, it is very much up to the TBB.dll if it allows for multiple versions at once. You might be able to statically link your code against your version of TBB, but in doing so you will need to make sure the statically linked-in symbols are not dynamically visible (a compiler collection dependant linker option). The code that you have that depends on TBB must probably also be linked in a separate linker step from the one that includes linking to maplink. And the application will need to be linked without relinking against TBB.dll.
At least that is how it could work for so files in Linux.
As mentioned in the comments, you may put the newer version of tbb.dll into your application directory, and it should work properly for both the application and the 3rd party library it uses. For example, the recent version - TBB 4.2 - is binary compatible with old versions back to TBB 2.0.
I have a c++ code that runs perfect on my linux machine (Ubuntu Karmic).
When I try to run it on another version, I have all sort of shared libraries missing.
Is there any way to merge all shared libraries into single executable?
Edit:
I think I've asked the wrong question. I should have ask for a way to static-link my executable when it is already built.
I found the answer in ermine & statifier
There are 3 possible reasons you have shared libraries missing:
you are using shared libraries which do not exist by default on the other distribution, or you have installed them on your host, but not the other one, e.g. libDBI.so
you have over-specified the version at link time, e.g. libz.so.1.2.3 and the other machine has an API compatible (major version 1) but different minor version 2.3, which would probably work with your program if only it would link
the major version of the library has changed, which means it is incompatible libc.so.2 vs libc.so.1.
The fixes are:
don't link libraries which you don't need that may not be on different distros, OR, install the additional libraries on the other machines, either manually or make them dependencies of your installer package (e.g. use RPM)
don't specify the versions so tightly on the command line - link libz.so.1 instead of libz.so.1.2.3.
compile multiple versions against different libc versions.
What you are describing is the use of static libraries instead of shared libraries.
There have been several technical solutions to the original problem noted here, e.g.
compile multiple versions against
different libc versions.
or
install the additional libraries on the
other machines
but if you're in the position of an ISV, there is really just one sane solution:
Get a clean install of an older system, (e.g. Ubuntu 6.x if you're targeting desktops, perhaps as far back as Red Hat 9 if you're targeting servers) and build your software on that. Generally libraries (and definitely libc) are backwards compatible, so you you won't have problems running on newer systems.
Of course if you have non-standard or recent-version lib dependencies this doesn't completely solve the problem. In that case, as other's have suggested, if you want to be robust it's better to dlopen() and report the problems (or run with reduced functionality).
I am not too sure, but you may want to create your executable by statically linking all the libraries.
One alternative is to dynamically load shared libraries using dlopen() and if it fails to load, exit gracefully with the message that the dependent library is required for the executable to work.
The user then may install the appropriate library.
Another possible solution is using statifier (http://statifier.sf.net) or Ermine (http://magicErmine.com)
Both of them are able pack dynamic executable and all of it's needed libraries into one self-containing executable