Question

Suppose I have three C source files. The first two to be LIBs (lib*.a?), and the third is an application which uses them.

The first is (re.c):

int re(int i) {
    return i;
}

The second is (test.c):

int re(int); // Depends on re.c

int test(int i) {
    return re(i);
}

And the third is (main.c):

#include<stdio.h>

int test(int); // Uses test.c

int main(void) {
    
    printf("%d\n",test(0));
    return 0;
}

Now how can I create the first two LIBs in such a way that allows me to statically link them later with main application?

I know how to create the DLLs and link them dynamically in my application such as:

cc -o re.dll re.c -shared -Wl,–out-implib=libre.a (for re.c)

cc -o test.dll test.c -L. -lre -shared -Wl,–out-implib=libtest.a (for test.c)

cc -o main.exe main.c -L. -lre -ltest

---

So how to create equivalent LIBs to be statically linked within my executable binary in MinGW, and how to link them?

Obviously, under Windows 🙂

Answer 1

I found the solution here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/84461/MinGW-Static-and-Dynamic-Libraries

The idea being is to compile all libraries (source files) without linking. Then converting the output objects with ar rcs -o lib*.a *.o where * is the name of objects created (converting them one by one). After that, we simply compile the application with -L. to specify the directory and with -l* to specify libraries names without GNU naming decoration.

For those libs which depends on others, they should be specified first and then the referenced libs, or else errors such as undefined reference to re will occur when I did -lre -ltest, where -ltest -lre is the right one, because test library refers to re library.

Here is how I compiled it:

cc -c -o test.o test.c

cc -c -o re.o re.c

ar rcs -o libtest.a test.o

ar rcs -o libre.a re.o

cc -o main.exe main.c -L. -ltest -lre

It also works for Tiny C Compiler.