How to include needed C library using gcc?

Question

I am trying to compile the simple C example from this Tutorial on Ubuntu using gcc. What do I have to use as argument for gcc to include the needed libraries for #include <libappindicator/app-indicator.h>?

Answer 1

-I <searchpath to include files>
-L <searchpath to the lib file>
-l<thelibname>

Answer 2

Use the -l command line option. You can specify the library search path with the -L option. E.g:

gcc -o myprogram -lfoo -L/home/me/foo/lib myprogram.c

This will link myprogram with the static library libfoo.a in the folder /home/me/foo/lib.

Answer 3

What you are trying to do here is making a gtk app, the above solutions are as applicable anywhere like using the -l option and -I option,

However for GTK apps you may also use pkg-config which make it easier as your paths can be predefined

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config

An interesting example can be found here http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/2.24/gtk-compiling.html

Answer 4

What I do is:

pkg-config --list-all | grep indicator

Answer 5

gcc example.c -o example  `pkg-config --cflags --libs appindicator-0.1`

pkg-config will fetch the required include and lib flags for libappindicator and it's dependencies. This assumes libappindictaor-dev package is already installed.

Answer 6

If you used apt-get, Synaptic Package Manager, etc. to get the appindicator library (vs. building it from source), did you only install the libappindicator1 package or did you also install libappindicator-dev to get the libappindicator header files? Linux packages very often have split the runtime libraries from the compile-time headers. That way people who only need the libraries to satisfy a dynamic link don't have to install unneeded headers. But since you're doing development you need those headers and therefore need the libappindicator-dev package as well.