I'm trying to link my kernel module with an external static lib, like this:
obj-m += my_prog.o
my_prog-objs := some/path/lib.a
# all the standard targets...
For some reasone, the above Makefile doesn't compile my_prog.c at all, and the resulting module doesn't contain its code. Certainly, if I remove my_prog-objs
line, my_prog.c
gets compiled.
What's wrong with such an approach in a Makefile?
When you create the my_prog-objs
list, you tell kbuild to use only the object files in that list. kbuild will no longer compile my_prog.c
, and including my_prog.o
in my_prog-objs
results in a circular dependency. Instead, you need to create a unique obj-m
and include both my_prog.o
and /path/lib.a
in its objs
list. For example:
obj-m += foo.o
foo-objs += my_prog.o /path/lib.a
Took me about 2 hours to figure out why my module was doing nothing!
You're overriding the default my_prog-objs
, which is just my_prog.o
. Instead of replacing the contents with the library, add the library to the default:
my_prog-objs := my_prog.o some/path/lib.a
Hopefully you're not trying to link against a general userspace library... that won't work at all in kernelspace.
You must create a synthetic name as well as the source file and it's object name. You can not use my_prog.o
directly as there are rules to make it from source. Here is an sample,
obj-m += full.o
full-src := my_prog.c
full-objs := $(full-src:.c=.o) lib.o # yes, make it an object.
Libraries are only supported from some special directories. Your object should be named lib.o_shipped
and placed in the same directory. See: item 11 under TODOnote. So, you need to take the external library and provide it locally as a shipped version. You need two object files; one is your compiled 'C' code/driver and the other is it linked together with the library.
Note: I am being facetious; it has a TODO to document this feature.