usr bin ld cannot find -l nameOfTheLibrary

Question

I m trying to compile my program and it returns this error    usr bin ld  cannot find -l lt nameOfTheLibrary gt    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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Here is Ubuntu information of my laptop   lsb release -a No LSB modules are available  Distributor ID  Ubuntu Description     Ubuntu 18 04 2 LTS Release     18 04 Codename    bionic   I use locate to find the  so files for boost filesystem and boost system  locate libboost filesystem locate libboost system   Then link  so files to  usr lib and rename to  so  sudo ln -s  usr lib x86 64-linux-gnu libboost filesystem so 1 65 1  usr lib libboost filesystem so sudo ln -s  usr lib x86 64-linux-gnu libboost system so 1 65 1  usr lib libboost system so   Done  R package velocyto R was successfully installed

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Compile Time  When g   says cannot find -l lt nameOfTheLibrary gt   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

User · Answer

I had this problem with compiling LXC on a fresh VM with Centos 7 8  I tried all the above and failed  Some suggested removing the -static flag from the compiler configuration but I didn t want to change anything  The only thing that helped was to install glibc-static and retry  Hope that helps someone

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There does not seem to be any answer which addresses the very common beginner problem of failing to install the required library in the first place   On Debianish platforms  if libfoo is missing  you can frequently install it with something like  apt-get install libfoo-dev   The -dev version of the package is required for development work  even trivial development work such as compiling source code to link to the library   The package name will sometimes require some decorations  libfoo0-dev   foo-dev without the lib prefix  etc   or you can simply use your distro s package search to find out precisely which packages provide a particular file    If there is more than one  you will need to find out what their differences are  Picking the coolest or the most popular is a common shortcut  but not an acceptable procedure for any serious development work    For other architectures  most notably RPM  similar procedures apply  though the details will be different

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Check the location of your library  for example lxxx so    locate lxxx so   If it is not in the  usr lib folder  type this   sudo cp yourpath lxxx so  usr lib   Done

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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

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Apart from the answers already given  it may also be the case that the   so file exists but is not named properly  Or it may be the case that   so file exists but it is owned by another user   root   Issue 1  Improper name   If you are linking the file as -l lt nameOfLibrary gt  then library file name MUST be of the form lib lt nameOfLibrary gt  If you only have  lt nameOfLibrary gt  so file  rename it   Issue 2  Wrong owner  To verify that this is not the problem - do  ls -l  path to  so file   If the file is owned by root or another user  you need to do  sudo chown yourUserName yourUserName  path to  so file

User · Answer

When you compile your program you must supply the path to the library  in g   use the -L option   g   myprogram cc -o myprogram -lmylib -L path foo bar

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First  you need to know the naming rule of lxxx    usr bin ld  cannot find -lc  usr bin ld  cannot find -lltdl  usr bin ld  cannot find -lXtst   lc means libc so  lltdl means libltdl so  lXtst means libXts so   So  it is lib   lib-name    so    Once we know the name  we can use locate to find the path of this lxxx so file     locate libiconv so  home user anaconda3 lib libiconv so      lt -- right here  home user anaconda3 lib libiconv so 2  home user anaconda3 lib libiconv so 2 5 1  home user anaconda3 lib preloadable libiconv so  home user anaconda3 pkgs libiconv-1 14-0 lib libiconv so  home user anaconda3 pkgs libiconv-1 14-0 lib libiconv so 2  home user anaconda3 pkgs libiconv-1 14-0 lib libiconv so 2 5 1  home user anaconda3 pkgs libiconv-1 14-0 lib preloadable libiconv so   If you cannot find it  you need to install it by yum  I use CentOS   Usually you have this file  but it does not link to right place     Link it to the right place  usually it is  lib64 or  usr lib64    sudo ln -s  home user anaconda3 lib libiconv so  usr lib64   Done   ref  https   i-pogo blogspot jp 2010 01 usrbinld-cannot-find-lxxx html

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I encountered the same error message   I built the cmocka as a so and tried to link it to my executable  But ld always complains below       usr bin ld  cannot find -lcmocka   It turns out that there are 3 files generated after cmocka is built    libcmocka so libcmocka so 0 libcmocka so 0 7 0   1 and 2 are symbol links and only 3 is the real file   I only copied the 1 to my library folder  where ld failed to find the 3   After I copied all 3  ld works

[c++] usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>

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