CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxmacosbashshellshared-libraries
Sophia_ES
Sophia_ES

Reputation: 1361

How to tell if current OS uses Linux-like or MacOSX-like shared libraries?

I am aware that there are (at least) two radically different kinds of shared-library files on Unix-type systems. One is the kind used on GNU/Linux systems and probably other systems as well (with the filename ending in ".so") and the other used in Mac OS X, and also possibly other systems as well (with the filename ending in ".dylib").

My question is this --- is there any type of test I could do from a shell-script that would easily detect which of these two paradigms the current OS uses for shared libraries?

I'm sure I could find some way to easily deal with this variance --- if only I knew of a simple test I could run from a shell-script that would tell me which type of shared library is used on the current system.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 222

Answers (1)

user3159253
user3159253

Reputation: 17455

Well, I guess you need to check filetypes of executables on a target platform. You may use file for that (check its output for, say, /bin/ls ). ELF is a most widely used executable type on Linux, while Mach-O is "natively" used in MacOS X.

A note: technically there're other executable types on these systems, say a.out and PEF, and, you guess, those formats have their own dynamic libraries. Frankly speaking Linux has a pluggable support for executable formats and even Win32 .EXEs may be executed "quasi-natively" in Linux (of course, they need an implementation of Win32 API working above a given kernel API, WINE is a such implemetation).

Also if you need to create a dynamically loaded library, then you should use one of those portable build systems (to name a few: GNU autotools, CMake, QMake...). Thus you'll get not only ordinary DLL extension but also linker flags, portable methods of installation/uninstallation and so on...

Upvotes: 1

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