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Do I need to link statically linked libraries with their dependencies?

I am creating an executable that depends on static library A, which in turn depends on static library B. When I build my application, do I need to link it to B in my build script as well?

To be more specific, do I have to do -la -lb

, or just linking to A through is -la

enough?

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3 answers


You may need to link to both libraries depending on how A. was built.



If A contains a linker comment entry indicating that the linker also looks in library B for symbols (usually included in one of the object files contained in A), then you do not need to include B when linking. If A does not contain this comment entry, you must enable it yourself.

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If both A and B are static, then you must concatenate both, in order A, then B ( -la -lb

). See this answer for an explanation of the order.

A statically linked program includes the libraries linked to it inside the executable.



Imagine that your program calls foo()

inside A, and somewhere inside A is bar()

called. So if A becomes part of your program, you then call undefined in bar()

in your program, so you also need to set a reference to B.

The exception is that a custom Visual Studio pragma ( #pragma comment(lib, libname)

) is used as @ 1201ProgramAlarm pointed out.

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The static library is fully included in the used program at compile time, so no additional file is required to run the program.

If library A was already built with static library B, A already has B and will no longer be needed.

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