Recently I have asked a question about what I should use to create self-contained executables that would be deployed under a number of Linux distribution. I got very scared at first, but after reading about C++ a little, I managed to get the first version of my executable going.
After a day full of joy, I just hit the wall again with another dilemma. The resulting executable must be installed in a number of Linux distributions (Slackware, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and a few more), and I am completely clueless on how to achieve it. All I know CentOS and Debian-based OSes has package managers, like apt or yum, but I am not sure those apply to my case.
The code I wrote depends on a couple of libraries (more specifically RudeSocket and yaml-cpp. I have been told that I would be able to compile the executable and link it dynamically, so I just needed to distribute the executable.
It happens that I could not find the .a file for the yaml-cpp library (just for RudeSocket). And here’s my problem so far:
At first, I went with dynamic linking but (obviously) when I copied the executable to another box:
$ ./main
./main: error while loading shared libraries: libyaml-cpp.so.0.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
When trying to compile it statically, I get an error too (because I don’t have the yaml-cpp .a file as I mentioned):
$ g++ main.cpp parse.cpp parse.h rudesocket-1.3.0/.libs/librudesocket.a -o main -static -L/usr/local/librudesocket-1.3.0/.libs/librudesocket.a(socket_connect_normal.o): In function `rude::sckt::Socket_Connect_Normal::simpleConnect(int&, char const*, int)':
/root/webbyget/sockets/rudesocket-1.3.0/src/socket_connect_normal.cpp:250: warning: Using 'gethostbyname' in statically linked applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc version used for linking
/tmp/cc3cEVK1.o: In function `operator>>(YAML::Node const&, Job&)':
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1a83): undefined reference to `YAML::Node::size() const'
/tmp/cc3cEVK1.o: In function `handle_job(rude::Socket, char const*)':
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1b79): undefined reference to `YAML::Parser::Parser(std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&)'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1bfd): undefined reference to `YAML::Node::Node()'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1c10): undefined reference to `YAML::Parser::GetNextDocument(YAML::Node&)'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1dc6): undefined reference to `YAML::Node::size() const'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1dee): undefined reference to `YAML::Node::~Node()'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1e18): undefined reference to `YAML::Node::~Node()'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1e37): undefined reference to `YAML::Parser::~Parser()'
parse.cpp:(.text+0x1e61): undefined reference to `YAML::Parser::~Parser()'
(...)
It’s pretty obvious to me that g++ cannot compile it statically without telling it where to find the classes for yaml-cpp.
It is very important that the installation should happen without human interaction, in an automated fashion.
So my question is really twofold:
-
how can I distribute this compiled program in the least complex way targeting all those distributions?
-
is there any de facto standard solution for this kind of problem?
Thank you in advance,
Felipe.
You might give this technique a try.