usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l

Question

I'm trying to compile my program and it returns this error :

usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>

in my makefile I use the command g++ and link to my library which is a symbolic link to my library located on an other directory.

Is there an option to add to make it work please?

Answer 1

Compile Time

When G++ says cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>, it means that G++ looked for the file lib{nameOfTheLibrary}.so, but it couldn't find it in the shared library search path, which by default points to /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib and somewhere else maybe.

To resolve this problem, you should either provide the library file (lib{nameOfTheLibrary}.so) in those search paths or use -L command option. -L{path} tells the G++ (actually ld) to find library files in path {path} in addition to default paths.

Example: Assuming you have a library at /home/taylor/libswift.so, and you want to link your app to this library. In this case you should supply the G++with the following options:

g++ main.cpp -o main -L/home/taylor -lswift

• Note 1: -l option gets the library name without lib and .so at its beginning and end.

• Note 2: In some cases, the library file name is followed by its version, for instance libswift.so.1.2. In these cases, G++ also cannot find the library file. A simple workaround to fix this is creating a symbolic link to libswift.so.1.2 called libswift.so.

---

Runtime

When you link your app to a shared library, it's required that library stays available whenever you run the app. In runtime your app (actually dynamic linker) looks for its libraries in LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It's an environment variable which stores a list of paths.

Example: In case of our libswift.so example, dynamic linker cannot find libswift.so in LD_LIBRARY_PATH (which points to default search paths). To fix the problem you should append that variable with the path libswift.so is in.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/taylor

Answer 2

To figure out what the linker is looking for, run it in verbose mode.

For example, I encountered this issue while trying to compile MySQL with ZLIB support. I was receiving an error like this during compilation:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lzlib

I did some Googl'ing and kept coming across different issues of the same kind where people would say to make sure the .so file actually exists and if it doesn't, then create a symlink to the versioned file, for example, zlib.so.1.2.8. But, when I checked, zlib.so DID exist. So, I thought, surely that couldn't be the problem.

I came across another post on the Internets that suggested to run make with LD_DEBUG=all:

LD_DEBUG=all make

Although I got a TON of debugging output, it wasn't actually helpful. It added more confusion than anything else. So, I was about to give up.

Then, I had an epiphany. I thought to actually check the help text for the ld command:

ld --help

From that, I figured out how to run ld in verbose mode (imagine that):

ld -lzlib --verbose

This is the output I got:

==================================================
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/libzlib.a failed
/usr/bin/ld.bfd.real: cannot find -lzlib

Ding, ding, ding...

So, to finally fix it so I could compile MySQL with my own version of ZLIB (rather than the bundled version):

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.8 /usr/lib/libzlib.so

Voila!

Answer 3

During compilation with g++ via make define LIBRARY_PATH if it may not be appropriate to change the Makefile with the -Loption. I had put my extra library in /opt/lib so I did:

$ export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib/

and then ran make for successful compilation and linking.

To run the program with a shared library define:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib/

before executing the program.

Answer 4

This error may also be brought about if the symbolic link is to a dynamic library, .so, but for legacy reasons -static appears among the link flags. If so, try removing it.

Answer 5

If your library name is say libxyz.so and it is located on path say:

/home/user/myDir

then to link it to your program:

g++ -L/home/user/myDir -lxyz myprog.cpp -o myprog

Answer 6

The library I was trying to link to turned out to have a non-standard name (i.e. wasn't prefixed with 'lib'), so they recommended using a command like this to compile it -

gcc test.c -Iinclude lib/cspice.a -lm