Question

gcc 4.5.1
Fedora 14 Linux

I have this static library that was build from a previous programmer. However, he has left the company and we don’t have the source code. All we have is the header files *.h and the libnet.a static library.

When I am try and link this with our application. I get a incompatible linker error. I think the problem is that the static library has been built on a 32 bit machine. And I am trying to link using a 64 bit machine. I could compile my application using the cflag -m32. However, I just want to know if there is any command that will give me if the static library was built in either 32 or 64 bit mode?

Many thanks for any suggestions,

Answer 1

An .a archive is just a collection of objects, so why not:

ar x libnet.a
file someobj.o

That will give you an answer like:

someobj.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped