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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T00:23:27+00:00

While reading documentation on some library, I saw that some library have some feature,

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While reading documentation on some library, I saw that some library have some feature, like compiling program using those library more easier, with just typing ‘-something‘ in the GCC argument instead of typing the path to library or using pkg (... -- cflag --clibs).

How can I get the list of those ‘-something‘ for libraries or packages currently installed on my system?

For example, OpenGL flags:
-lGLUT -lGL

They are surely stored in a GCC’s config file when I use the package manager to install new library, or how GCC would know how to use them?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Those libraries are not stored in any configuration file.

    If you check the GCC link options you will see an option “-l” which is used to select libraries to link with. What that option does is to look for libraries in a specified path.

    If you look in the folder /usr/lib you will see a lot of files named like /usr/lib/libgtkspell.so.0.0.0. This if for a library named gtkspell. You link with it by using -lgtkspell, the linker will automatically add the other parts when searching for the file.

    The pkg-config application is good for libraries that need special extra GCC flags, either when compiling (--cflags) or linking (--libs). But the actual flags pkg-config adds to the compilation/linking are just standard GCC flags.

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