Hi! I'm totally lost when it comes to shared libraries on Linux. I know that on win32, when I put the .dll file in the same folder as the executable it will be found and used. How do I achieve same functionality with .so files on Linux? thanks :)

LD_LIBRARYPATH points to locaations where ld has to search for libs
and
/etc/ld.so.conf and /etc/ld.so.conf.d/* contain more directories to search in.

the most common place where to find libs is /usr/lib.

e.g. you could run your program like this: $ LD_LIBRARYPATH=/where/ever ./myprogram

Most libraries just move any library files into /usr/lib. This is frequently done in the "install" target of a makefile.

Quote: Original post by hydroo
LD_LIBRARYPATH points to locaations where ld has to search for libs
and
/etc/ld.so.conf and /etc/ld.so.conf.d/* contain more directories to search in.

the most common place where to find libs is /usr/lib.

e.g. you could run your program like this: $ LD_LIBRARYPATH=/where/ever ./myprogram

It's LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

And, if you add a new line to /etc/ld.so.conf or drop a text file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d, you will need to rerun ldconfig to regenerate the search cache file (/etc/ld.so.cache).

The default place ld-linux.so (the dynamic linking loader) looks is usually /usr/lib and then /lib (see ld.so(8) for documentation).

If you are using gcc (or g++) you can use "-Wl,-rpath=/The/Search/Path" to put the search path directly into the executable.

Quote: "-Wl,-rpath=/The/Search/Path"

It would seem it's exactly what I'm looking for, thanks!

Quote: It's LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Isn't LD_LIBRARY_PATH broken, and should not be used?

Quote: Original post by Yezu
Isn't LD_LIBRARY_PATH broken, and should not be used?

I'm not aware of any such problem and we use it all the time in both commercial and free software products I work on. Do you have a link or reference to anything exaplaining the breakage and why we should avoid it? If it's true, I may have quite a lot of work to do in the next little while...

If you throw LD_LIBRARY_PATH into google, half the results on the first page are about how to set it, and the other half are explanations of why you shouldn't.

This is a good tutorial about libraries in Linux:
Static, Shared Dynamic and Loadable Linux Libraries

Quote: Original post by Bregma

Quote: Original post by Yezu
Isn't LD_LIBRARY_PATH broken, and should not be used?

I'm not aware of any such problem and we use it all the time in both commercial and free software products I work on. Do you have a link or reference to anything exaplaining the breakage and why we should avoid it? If it's true, I may have quite a lot of work to do in the next little while...

LD_LIBRARY_PATH - just say no
Why LD_LIBRARY_PATH is bad