[Newbie question] compilation,, linking and general libbfd/libiberty question

[Nicholas Clifton]

Hi Florian,

> $ gcc  -o tbfd tbfd.c /usr/lib/libiberty.a /usr/lib/libbfd.a -liberty
> -lbfd -ldl

> /usr/lib/libbfd.a(compress.o): In function `bfd_compress_section_contents':
> (.text+0x2c): undefined reference to `compressBound'

As you have discovered these symbols are provided by the z compression 
library, so you need to include -lz on the command line.

> Is there any additional introductory material that I could read.

Not really.  The sources are the best reference.  Although in this 
particular case perhaps the easiest way to find out what was going wrong 
would be to use the sources to build the binutils for an arbitrary 
target (eg configure --target=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) and then examine the 
command line used to link in the bfd library when creating an executable.


> PS: Sorry for the question, but why is the libiberty no independent
> shared object? I read that it has historically and propably organically
> grown, but I don't see why this is the reason for libiberty not beeing a
> .so for it's own...

Actually it can be built as a shared library - just add 
"--enable-shared" to the configure command line at the start.  It is 
just a historical thing that the default is a static library.

Cheers
   Nick