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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T22:09:19+00:00

I have a directory structure as below: / | +— /lib | libsomething.a |

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I have a directory structure as below:

/
|
+--- /lib
|      libsomething.a
|      libsomething.so
|
+----/obj
       anObjFile.o

When I run the following command from within the obj directory:

g++ -L../lib -lsomething anObjFile.o

I get undefined reference errors. Apparently gcc is failing to locate libsomething.a.

But now if I delete libsomething.so and then rerun the command, linking succeeds.

As per gcc documentation -lsomething should expand to libsomething.a. Then why is presence of libsomething.so causing the library search to fail? Also, how can I resolve this problem?

I’m on Linux Mint 12 with gcc version 4.6.1.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The .so file is a dynamic library, meaning it is used each time you run your program. In that case you need to tell your OS (Mint in this case) where that dynamic library is located so your prgramm can find it at run time.

    The .a file is a static library, meaning functions needed from it will be copied into your prgramm while linking. So your prgramm can run without the library file.

    If nothing else is said gcc will assume you want to use the dynamic lib. If it can find a .so file it will use it instead of a .a file. If you want to tell gcc to make your programm static (use the .a file) you can add -static to your gcc call.

    However the reason why the linking fails when the dynamic library is used is not clear. How did you install/build the library?

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