Creating a project, from Makefile to static/dynamic libraries in UNIX

Question

Guys, would you describe a few things about c++ building blocks, on unix.

I want to create an application that links against static libs and dynamic libs (.so).

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Answer 1

Static libraries are usually archived with the ar command. Once you build all of the object files (preferably with the -fPIC switch on GCC), you can run ar like so:

ar -rs archivename.a list.o of.o objects.o

The man page describes the options.

Dynamic libraries are built usually with the -shared switch to gcc or ld and the output file name with a .so extension.

Autotools handles this with the libtool program. I'm not familiar with its use.

Linking against these libraries can be done either by listing the libraries with the -l (ell) switch (such as -lX to link to libX.so) or by specifying them directly with absolute paths (such as adding /usr/lib/libX.so to your command). Static libraries are linked by specifying -static before -l or the appropriate absolute path to the .a archive.