How can I link a shared library function statically in gcc?
145
votes
6 Answers
113
votes
Refer to:
You need the static version of the library to link it.
A shared library is actually an executable in a special format with entry points specified (and some sticky addressing issues included). It does not have all the information needed to link statically.
You can't statically link a shared library (or dynamically link a static one).
The flag -static will force the linker to use static libraries (.a) instead of shared (.so) ones. But static libraries aren't always installed by default, so you may have to install the static library yourself.
Another possible approach is to use statifier or Ermine. Both tools take as input a dynamically linked executable and as output create a self-contained executable with all shared libraries embedded.
77
votes
If you want to link, say, libapplejuice statically, but not, say, liborangejuice, you can link like this:
gcc object1.o object2.o -Wl,-Bstatic -lapplejuice -Wl,-Bdynamic -lorangejuice -o binary
There's a caveat -- if liborangejuice uses libapplejuice, then libapplejuice will be dynamically linked too.
You'll have to link liborangejuice statically alongside with libapplejuice to get libapplejuice static.
And don't forget to keep -Wl,-Bdynamic else you'll end up linking everything static, including libc (which isn't a good thing to do).
19
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If you have the .a file of your shared library (.so) you can simply include it with its full path as if it was an object file, like this:
This generates main.o by just compiling:
gcc -c main.c
This links that object file with the corresponding static library and creates the executable (named "main"):
gcc main.o mylibrary.a -o main
Or in a single command:
gcc main.c mylibrary.a -o main
It could also be an absolute or relative path:
gcc main.c /usr/local/mylibs/mylibrary.a -o main
19
votes
Yeah, I know this is an 8 year-old question, but I was told that it was possible to statically link against a shared-object library and this was literally the top hit when I searched for more information about it.
To actually demonstrate that statically linking a shared-object library is not possible with ld (gcc's linker) -- as opposed to just a bunch of people insisting that it's not possible -- use the following gcc command:
gcc -o executablename objectname.o -Wl,-Bstatic -l:libnamespec.so
(Of course you'll have to compile objectname.o from sourcename.c, and you should probably make up your own shared-object library as well. If you do, use -Wl,--library-path,. so that ld can find your library in the local directory.)
The actual error you receive is:
/usr/bin/ld: attempted static link of dynamic object `libnamespec.so'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Hope that helps.
10
votes
A bit late but ... I found a link that I saved a couple of years ago and I thought it might be useful for you guys:
CDE: Automatically create portable Linux applications
http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html
- Just download the program
Execute the binary passing as a argument the name of the binary you want make portable, for example: nmap
./cde_2011-08-15_64bit nmap
The program will read all of libs linked to nmap and its dependencias and it will save all of them in a folder called cde-package/ (in the same directory that you are).
- Finally, you can compress the folder and deploy the portable binary in whatever system.
Remember, to launch the portable program you have to exec the binary located in cde-package/nmap.cde
Best regards
