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From http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/cpp/gcc/create_lib.html:

Note: the library must start with the three letters lib and have the suffix .a.

Is this an operating system convention, or a gcc/ar quirk? Xcode seems to be able to create libraries without the prefix. What's it doing differently?

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    It was always my understanding that this is a naming convention that is not enforced by the compiler toolchain. Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 18:35
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    probably using the full path to the archive. The lib/.a convection is used with the -l flag, ie. -lXXX looks for libXXX.a or libXXX.so. Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 18:35

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You can name a library whatever you want, but if you want gcc's -l flag to find the right one, you need to name it the way that link describes. For example:

gcc -o myapp myapp.c -lm

Will compile myapp.c, link the resulting object with libm.a, and output an executable called myapp. These days, there might be a more complicated search path involving dynamic library names, etc., but you should get the basic idea from this example.

From the gcc man page:

-l library ...

... surrounds library with lib and .a and searches several directories.

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14 Comments

Those old unix guys really hated using the keyboard! This is one feature of the unix-style linker that I've never really seen the justification for being continued into the present. Of course, you can always provide the full path and name of the library.
@Max - yeah it's optional. You can put a space there. But when you link against libiberty.a, it's kind of fun to write -liberty...
@Carl: Especially, if you do not have the liberty to name the library like you want to. :)
@n.m. Yeah, I've used one of those in fact this one columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/la36.html, but I still think in this case they took things a little too far.
@n.m. You had 300 baud? You lucky dog, be glad you weren't stuck with 110! They don't call those ports tty for nothing.
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