Very Computer

Hi!

I'm not a real Unix speciaist thus I have a question about linking
libraries on Unix.

If only part of a library is needed in the executable, will all the
library be linked with it (static library), is their an option to change
that behavior, a special way to build the .a...

Thanks a lot

Walter Wartenweiler

No. Basically a ".a" library is a collection of .o object files which
have been lumped together in a single file for convenience. The linker
only includes the minimum set of objects that is necessary to resolve
all of the external references your program contains.

Properly written libraries are written to consist of a lot of small
.o files so that programs will only contain those pieces that are
actually necessary for the particular program.

See ar(1).

--
Henning Makholm

No, the static library (.a) is a collection of object files.  On most
systems, those object files containing symbols that you need will be
linked in in their entirety.

If you're using new versions of egcs and GNU ld on ELF systems, you can
use "-ffunction-sections" at build time to put the functions in a file
into different ELF sections, then you can link with "-gc-sections" to
garbage-collect those sections and include only the functions you want.
At least that's the rumor I've heard, but I haven't found a version of
ld that supports it yet.  And it's not supported with shared libraries,
though such support is planned (eventually, if someone contributes it).

--Sumner