CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++linuxubuntuglibclibc
Lynden Shields
Lynden Shields

Reputation: 1062

How can I work out why a specific version of a library is in the dependencies?

I'm building a large C++ project using cmake on ubuntu 12.04 and then taking the resulting binary package and trying to run it on ubuntu 11.04. However the program fails saying it needs glibc version 2.14 but can only find up to version 2.13. How can I find out exactly why glibc=>2.14 is required?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 628

Answers (2)

Andy Ross
Andy Ross

Reputation: 12043

Unlike most libraries, glibc versions its symbols. Every symbol is tagged with a value (e.g. "GLIBC_2.3.4") representing the version of the library where it's interface was last changed. This allows the library to contain more than one version of a given symbol and support binaries compiled against older versions while preserving the ability to evolve. You can see this detail with objdump -T /lib/libc.so.6.

Basically, something in your app was linked against a symbol that was changed since 11.04. Try objdump -T on your binary and see what tags it's looking for.

But broadly, backwards compatibility doesn't work like that in Linux. If you want something to run on older software, you should build it on older software. It's possible to set up a backwards-compatible toolchain on more recent distros, but it's not the default.

Upvotes: 3

Rajesh J Advani
Rajesh J Advani

Reputation: 5710

When you build your C++ project, it will link to the version of the glibc library on your 12.04 installation. What are the linker options in your build command?

Without knowing exactly what you are building, I'd say you might be better off building on 11.04 and then running on 12.04.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions