Question

I have a shared library that I wish to link an executable against using GCC. The shared library has a nonstandard name not of the form libNAME.so, so I can not use the usual -l option. (It happens to also be a Python extension, and so has no ‘lib’ prefix.)

I am able to pass the path to the library file directly to the link command line, but this causes the library path to be hardcoded into the executable.

For example:

g++ -o build/bin/myapp build/bin/_mylib.so 

Is there a way to link to this library without causing the path to be hardcoded into the executable?

Answer 1

The -l option of g++ has a ":" prefix that allows you to use libraries with unconventional file names. The command

g++ -o build/bin/myapp -l:_mylib.so other_source_files 

should search your path for the shared library with the file name _mylib.so.