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Libtool - Creating Object Files

To create object files from source files, the compiler is invoked with the -c flag. Libtool hides the complexity of generating position-independent code (PIC) for shared libraries by creating separate PIC and non-PIC object files. When compiling library source files, libtool automatically generates additional PIC object files with the appropriate flags and stores them in a .libs subdirectory.

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44 views

Libtool - Creating Object Files

To create object files from source files, the compiler is invoked with the -c flag. Libtool hides the complexity of generating position-independent code (PIC) for shared libraries by creating separate PIC and non-PIC object files. When compiling library source files, libtool automatically generates additional PIC object files with the appropriate flags and stores them in a .libs subdirectory.

Uploaded by

fafasdfsdfas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4/28/2021 Libtool: Creating object files

3.1 Creating object files


gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Creating-object-files.html

To create an object file from a source file, the compiler is invoked with the -c flag (and
any other desired flags):

The above compiler command produces an object file, usually named main.o, from the
source file main.c.

For most library systems, creating object files that become part of a static library is as
simple as creating object files that are linked to form an executable:

Shared libraries, however, may only be built from position-independent code (PIC). So,
special flags must be passed to the compiler to tell it to generate PIC rather than the
standard position-dependent code.

Since this is a library implementation detail, libtool hides the complexity of PIC compiler
flags and uses separate library object files (the PIC one lives in the .libs subdirectory
and the static one lives in the current directory). On systems without shared libraries, the
PIC library object files are not created, whereas on systems where all code is PIC, such as
AIX, the static ones are not created.

To create library object files for foo.c and hello.c, simply invoke libtool with the
standard compilation command as arguments (see Compile mode):

Note that libtool silently creates an additional control file on each ‘compile’ invocation.
The .lo file is the libtool object, which Libtool uses to determine what object file may be
built into a shared library. On ‘a23’, only static libraries are supported so the library
objects look like this:

# foo.lo - a libtool object file


# Generated by ltmain.sh (GNU libtool) 2.4.6
#
# Please DO NOT delete this file!
# It is necessary for linking the library.

# Name of the PIC object.


pic_object=none

# Name of the non-PIC object.


non_pic_object='foo.o'

https://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Creating-object-files.html 1/3
4/28/2021 Libtool: Creating object files

# foo.lo - a libtool object file


# Generated by ltmain.sh (GNU libtool) 2.4.6
#
# Please DO NOT delete this file!
# It is necessary for linking the library.

# Name of the PIC object.


pic_object='.libs/foo.o'

# Name of the non-PIC object.


non_pic_object='foo.o'

a23$ libtool --mode=compile gcc -g -O -c foo.c


gcc -g -O -c foo.c -o foo.o
a23$ libtool --mode=compile gcc -g -O -c hello.c
gcc -g -O -c hello.c -o hello.o
a23$

burger$ libtool --mode=compile gcc -g -O -c foo.c


mkdir .libs
gcc -g -O -c foo.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/foo.o
gcc -g -O -c foo.c -o foo.o >/dev/null 2>&1
burger$

burger$ libtool --mode=compile gcc -no-suppress -g -O -c hello.c


gcc -g -O -c hello.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/hello.o
gcc -g -O -c hello.c -o hello.o
burger$

burger$ gcc -g -O -c main.c


burger$

burger$ gcc -g -O -c foo.c


burger$ gcc -g -O -c hello.c
burger$

On shared library systems, libtool automatically generates an additional PIC object by


inserting the appropriate PIC generation flags into the compilation command:

Note that Libtool automatically created .libs directory upon its first execution, where
PIC library object files will be stored.

Since ‘burger’ supports shared libraries, and requires PIC objects to build them, Libtool
has compiled a PIC object this time, and made a note of it in the libtool object:

Notice that the second run of GCC has its output discarded. This is done so that compiler
warnings aren’t annoyingly duplicated. If you need to see both sets of warnings (you
might have conditional code inside ‘#ifdef PIC’ for example), you can turn off
suppression with the -no-suppress option to libtool’s compile mode:

https://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Creating-object-files.html 2/3
4/28/2021 Libtool: Creating object files

https://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Creating-object-files.html 3/3

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