Question

I have a very basic C++ project in code blocks that makes use of glfw.so and two other libraries that are compiled to .so files from another project, libHorde3D.so and libHorde3DUtils.so. The latter are placed in the project root folder, while glfw is somewhere in my /usr/lib (I think).

I have added the project folder to the linker and compiler search paths in code blocks. I have added the libHorde3D.so and libHorde3DUtils.so as well as glfw.so to the Link Libraries in the Linker Settings tab. I thought that this would be enough based on the previous similar questions here on stackoverflow.

However when I press build:

ld cannot find -lHorde3D.so
ld cannot find -lHorde3DUtils.so
ld cannot find -lglfw.so

My system is Arch Linux 64 and I am using GCC.
I also tried bopying libHorde3D.so and libHorde3DUtils.so in /usr/lib and /usr/lib64 with no success.

P.S. All search paths are copied across the Debug and Release target.

Answer 1

Say, if the library name is libmylibrary.so, then linker option to link against that library would look like -lmylibrary. Note that lib prefix and .so suffix are not there — they are added automatically by the linker. In your case it seems like you specified the wrong name. Try removing .so from it, that should solve the problem.

Here is a simple demonstration of how to trigger the failure by making a similar mistake:

$ echo 'int main() { return 0; }' > test.c
$ gcc -o test ./test.c -lc
$ gcc -o test ./test.c -lc.so
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc.so
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
$ 

The first command succeeds and the second one (with incorrect library name) fails.