CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cgcc
smatter
smatter

Reputation: 29178

Location of C standard library

In the gcc manual it is given that "The C standard library itself is stored in ‘/usr/lib/libc.a’". I have gcc installed, but could not find libc.a at the said location. Curious to know where is it located.

I find many .so files in /usr/lib location. What are those?

Upvotes: 53

Views: 131751

Answers (5)

phoxis
phoxis

Reputation: 61910

If you are on RPM based Linux (Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora/SUSE) then you would get the location of the installed glibc with rpm -ql glibc and rpm -ql glibc-devel .

locate libc.a would get you the location. And to see from where it comes do: rpm -qf /usr/lib/libc.a

Here is what rpm -qi has to tell about these packages

glibc-devel:

The glibc-devel package contains the object files necessary for developing programs which use the standard C libraries (which are used by nearly all programs). If you are developing programs which will use the standard C libraries, your system needs to have these standard object files available in order to create the executables. Install glibc-devel if you are going to develop programs which will use the standard C libraries

glibc:

The glibc package contains standard libraries which are used by multiple programs on the system. In order to save disk space and memory, as well as to make upgrading easier, common system code is kept in one place and shared between programs. This particular package contains the most important sets of shared libraries: the standard C library and the standard math library. Without these two libraries, a Linux system will not function.

Upvotes: 9

rscohn2
rscohn2

Reputation: 1029

If you are looking for libc.a:

$ gcc --print-file-name=libc.a
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.a

Upvotes: 62

jada12276
jada12276

Reputation: 139

You need to install package for static libraries separately: glibc-static.i686

Upvotes: 3

Drew Sullivan
Drew Sullivan

Reputation: 21

On centos 5.8

$ ls -l /usr/lib/libc.a
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 2442786 Apr  8  2010 /usr/lib/libc.a

$ rpm -qf /usr/lib/libc.a
glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.43.el4_8.3

You also have to have the glibc-devel package install under RedHat distributions.

Upvotes: 2

Chris Eberle
Chris Eberle

Reputation: 48775

A few things:

  • gcc and glibc are two different things. gcc is the compiler, glibc are the runtime libraries. Pretty much everything needs glibc to run.
  • .a files are static libraries, .so means shared object and is the Linux equivalent of a DLL
  • Most things DON'T link against libc.a, they link against libc.so

Hope that clears it up for you. As for the location, it's almost certainly going to be in /usr/lib/libc.a and / or /usr/lib/libc.so. Like I said, the .so one is the more common.

Upvotes: 37

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