Linking several dependent libraries into my "bare metal" C application - c

I am developing a bare metal C applications on an ST ARM-Cortex-M3. I have also developed libraries that are usable across all these applications.
I used to use Keil ARM-MDK, but want to move over to GNU-GCC. I thus downloaded the latest version of GCC and started recompiling the code.
Although similar questions to this one have been answered, it does not solve my problem ans therefore I am posting my question.
I have a problem with the following:
Lib_Flash has a function Read_Flash(). Lib_AppCfg links in Lib_Flash as it uses Read_Flash().
My application (App) links in both Lib_Flash and Lib_AppCfg. App also uses Read_Flash() for some specific FLASH checks.
In Keil MDK-ARM it worked fine.
With GCC, when functions using Lib_AppCfg are built, I get errors stating that Read_Flash() is an "undefined reference".
I am not sure where the problem lies. Is it in the linking of the Lib_Appcfg is built or is the problem when I link App?
Please advise. If you need additional information, please let me know.

The GNU linker by default searches the libraries once in the order listed on the command line. So if a library later in the list has a reference to symbol defined in an earlier library or object file, then it cannot be resolved.
The simple solution is to use library grouping; this causes the linker to repeatedly search a list of libraries until no further synbols can be resolved. If you are invoking the linker (ld) separately, then the linker options are:
--start-group _Flash _AppCfg --end-group
or the alternative form
-( _Flash _AppCfg -)
See the GNU linker manual for details. If driving the linker indirectly through gcc you pass linker options via the -Wl option, something like:
-Wl,-(,_Flash,_AppCfg,-)
I think.

It sounds to me like you have got an ordering problem in your libraries. Some linkers will rescan all the libraries on the command line till all references are resolved (or can't be resolved). Other linkers work sequentially along the link line.
In particular, this means that if library A defines a symbol SYM_A and library B which comes after library A references this symbol, it won't be resolved on the 2nd type of linker, and your link will fail.
To get round this, you can do one or more of the following
Reorder the libraries
Replicate libraries on the link line where
necessary
Refactor your libraries so there aren't mutual
dependencies between them (that is A references symbol SYMB, which
is defined in B, but B references SYMA)

Related

AMD HIP executable with undefined symbols during runtime

I want to use the AMD HIP framework for my self-written GPU kernels. I do that by using a third-party library, which takes responsibility of taking the code and compiling it with HIP (and additional backends if desired). The technical setup looks as follows:
The kernel code is compiled into a static helper library with AMD HIP linking and toolchain enabled (CMake: set_target_properties(${target_name} PROPERTIES LINKER_LANGUAGE HIP))
This helper library is then linked into the core part of our own library, which is a shared library
This core part is then linked into the final shared library which is shipped at the end
Therefore, we have 3 different libraries in the build process that are linked together.
The build process exits without any errors s.t. that during compile- and link-time there are no errors. However, when I now want to use this library, I get the following error during runtime: undefined symbol: __hip_fatbin.
Because the code used to not even link correctly, I added these two flags to CMake which made it build successfully (as suggested by others on GitHub): -fgpu-rdc --hip-link. However, the library still does not run because of this undefined symbol error during execution. Inspecting the created libraries with nm -gD shows U in front of __hip_fatbin which makes me wonder why it is like that. Shouldn't that be somehow defined when linking with the HIP toolchain?
So my question is if anybody experienced the same issue yet when trying to use AMD HIP across multiple libraries that are linked against each other. Might this be an issue with gcc and HIP's clang? Or is there any chance for me to get further details which makes me understand what to do now. Thank you!

why can I use stdio.h without a corresponding stdio.c [duplicate]

This may seem a little stupid:) But it's been bothering a while. When I include some header files which are written by others in my C++/C program, how does the compiler know where is the implementation of the class member function declared in the header files?
Say I want to write some program which takes advantage of the OpenCV library. Normally I would want to use:
#include <opencv2/core/core.hpp>
#include <opencv2/imgproc/imgproc.hpp>
#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>
However, these are just header files which, as far as I can tell, only declares functions but without implementation. Then how does the compiler know where to find the implementation? Especially when I want to build a .so file.
There is a similar post. Basically it said thrid-party library, esp. commercial product don't release source code, so they ship the lib file with the header. However, it didn't make clear how does the compiler know where to find the lib file. In addition, The answer in that post mentioned if I want to compile the code of my own, I would need the source code of the implementation of those header files. Does that mean I cannot build a .so file without the source of the implementation?
In general, the implementation is distributed as form of pre-compiled libraries. You need to tell the compiler where they are located.
For example, for gcc, quoting the online manual
-llibrary
-l library
Search the library named library when linking. [...]
and,
-Ldir
Add directory dir to the list of directories to be searched for -l.
Note: you don't need to explicitly specify the standard libraries, they are automatically linked. Rather, if you don't want them to be linked with you binary, you need to inform the compiler by passing the -nostdlib option.
The exact answer is platform specific, but in general I'd say that some libraries are in fact header-only, and others include the implementation of the library's methods in binary object files. I believe OpenCV belongs to the second kind, i.e. provides the implementation in object files, for either dynamic or static linking, and your program links against them. If your build works, then it is already configured to link against those libraries. At this point the details become very much platform and build-system specific.
Note that for common platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux you seldom need to build popular libraries like OpenCV yourself. You mentioned .so files, which implies dynamic linking on Linux. This library is open-source so in theory you could build it yourself, but in practice I'd much rather use my distribution's package installation tool (e.g. apt-get or yum) to install opencv-dev (or something similar) from my distribution's repository.
As the others already explained, you need to tell your compiler where to look for the files.
This implies that you should know which path to specify for your compiler.
Some components provide a mechanism where you don't need to know the exact path but can automatically retrieve it from your system.
For example if you want to compile using GTK+3 you need to specify these flags for your compiler:
CFLAGS:= -I./ `pkg-config --cflags gtk+-3.0`
LIBS:= -lm `pkg-config --libs gtk+-3.0`
This will automatically result in the required include and library path flags for GCC.
The compiler toolchain contains at least two major tools: the compiler and the link editor (it is very common to name compiler the whole chain, but strictly speaking it is wrong).
The compiler is in charge of producing object code from the available source code. In that phase the compiler knows where to locate standard headers, and can be told to use non-standard dirs to locate headers. For example, gcc uses -I to let you specify some more alternate dirs that may contains headers.
The link editor is in charge of producing executable files (its basic common usage) from object codes. To produce an executable it needs to find every implementation of declared things at compile-time for which you didn't provide source code. These can be other object codes, object codes in libraries, etc. The link editor knows where are located standard libraries and can be told to let you specify non-standard dirs. For example you can tell the gcc toolchain to use alternate dirs with L that may contain libraries. You may be aware that link edition is now usually a two phase process: location-and-name-resolution at link-time and real link-edition at run-time (dynamic libraries are very common).
Basically a library is just a collection of object code. Consult internet to see how you can easily build libraries either from source code of from object code.

(error) unresolved symbols when build C++ application for ARM using Green Hills toolchain

I cross compile an application for target device using ARM arch using Green Hills toolchain (the device will run INTEGRITY OS) but it fail with some error like that
__vec_new from ...
__vec_delete from ...
I don't understand what it means and how to resolve it.
Anyone can help me ?
Unresolved symbols indicate failure to link the necessary object code or libraries defining said symbols. These particular symbols are most probably related to implementations of the new and delete C++ operators, and most likely indicate that you have not linked the C++ library. I am not very familiar with the Green Hills tool chain, but, in cases where you invoke the linker separately to the compiler, you may need to explicitly specify C++ linking.
If using an IDE it is possible that you have created a C project but added C++ code - this may result in linker options that do not link C++ support and libraries.
The Green Hill's compiler has a choice of C++ libraries selected by either language variant option, or linker override option. These options can be set in the MULTI IDE settings or on the command line depending on how you are managing your project. Consult the compiler/linker documentation - I have found the following:
You should have access to the full documentation, the pages following this describe how teh linker searches libraries and how to specify alternate libraries. If you have disabled the automatic library search by specifying -nostdlib, the automatic linking will not be performed and you will have to explicitly link the necessary libraries.
I have resolved the error
The cause is the project source contains a file *.c source it included and
I renamed it to *.cpp then the error disappeared

How to auto link a library in MinGW or GCC?

When a custom library is used in the code, it requires -l linker parameter to use:
gcc myprogram.c -lmylibrary
Is there a way to convince MinGW linker to check header files and automatically find and link a library in /lib folder? Or is there a reason why it would be a bad idea?
No.
The problem of looking at C source code and figuring out which libraries it uses is very hard. It feels kind of "AI complete" to me, which is why it's typically solved manually by the programmer pointing out the exact right libraries to satisfy the dependencies with.
Imagine for mylibrary, it's easy to imagine a system with both mylibrary 1.x and 2.x versions installed, and some calls are named exactly the same. Now try to imagine a computer program capable of deducing what you meant, which library to link with. It's not possible, since only the programmer knows.
The pkg-config tool helps with the mechanics of what each library requires in order to be used, but it's still up to you to tell it (via the module name argument(s)) which exact libraries to use.

Prevent linking of mallocr.o file within libc.a

This is for my company, so I'm leery of being too specific, but I'll try.
I am attempting to add support for some existing ANSI C code to our platform. I am using GCC 4.7.2 as well as the GNU linker. We use part of newlib, but also some other C libraries, specifically libc.a. The end goal of this is to get an EXE or ELF image (this is for a PowerPC architecture micro) to put into the micro's RAM. This is being done on Windows XP. I am simply using a batch file, not a build environment or toolchain.
One of my build errors is a multiple definition problem of malloc/free functions. The cmd window spits out the error that there are definitions of these in both malloc.o and mallocr.o. Both of these are within libc.a. I've been told the "r" in mallocr.o is for reentrancy. I've also been told our platform does not support reentrancy.
I'm trying to resolve this error by preventing the linking of mallocr.o from within libc.a. This is the part where I am lost, I don't know how to do this. Google hasn't turned up anything helpful, and I haven't found a question on this site yet that answers my problem. I don't know if this is even possible.
There is really no specific code snippet to include in this question. Below is the error from the cmd window. I've *'d out company specific things I am not comfortable sharing.
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(mallocr.o): In function `free':
mallocr.c:(.text+0x19c): multiple definition of `free'
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(malloc.o):malloc.c:(.text+0x28): first defined here
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(mallocr.o): In function `malloc':
mallocr.c:(.text+0x468): multiple definition of `malloc'
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(malloc.o):malloc.c:(.text+0x0): first defined here

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