Re: Linking a shared library

[Marc Glisse <marc dot glisse at inria dot fr>]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2018, Edward Diener wrote:

> An executable I am creating needs to link and run with a shared library 
> called, let's say, 'libmyshare.so' in a relative directory called, let's say 
> 'mylibs/lib'.
>
> Does using the -L option while compiling the source files to object files add 
> the relative directory 'mylibs/lib' to the library search path for shared 
> libraries when linking ?

No. Since -L tells -l where to look, why would you want to separate them 
into 2 separate commands? Did some documentation recommend that somewhere?

clang even gives you a warning if you pass -L to a compile (-c) command.

> Do I specify the shared library to the linker as '-lmyshare' when linking or 
> do I rather specify the shared library simply as 'libmyshare.so' when linking 
> ?

-lmyshare (or you can pass /full/path/to/libmyshare.so and omit the -L 
option).

> I have tried using '-Lmylibs/lib' when compiling and '-lmyshare' when linking 
> but the linker fails with the message:
>
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmyshare
>
> so I am doing something wrong and do not know what it is.

(your next question will likely be how to tell where to find the library 
at runtime...)

--
Marc Glisse