embedding lua code in c - c

I am attempting to follow the besic guide given here on embedding lua into C. I copied the code verbatim into my own embed.c file and executed the exact compiler command listed:
cc -o embed embed.c \
-I/usr/local/include \
-L/usr/local/lib \
-llua -llualib
I get the error:
embed.c:19:14: error: invalid storage class for function ‘openlualibs’
After which I moved the functions outside of main, compiled again, and got:
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -llualib
I am at a loss for why I cannot compile this. lua is installed properly. has anyone else encountered these problems? If this is a bad tutorial, please feel free to simply direct me to a batter one.

On some Linux distributions you may need to install the lua-devel (or similar named) package, in order to get the proper header files and library symlinks required for compiling and linking projects against the package. If you do have a liblualib-<version>.so.<version>, for example liblualib-5.so.5.0, you may need to install the devel package.
Starting with lua 5.1, liblualib does not exist. Here is the release announcement: http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2005-05/msg00186.html

I've had somewhat similar problems when embedding Lua. What I found that works for me is linking the dynamic link library (dl) and the math library (m). The math library may not be necessary if you're not using the lmath standard library.
cc -o embed embed.c -I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib -llua -lm -ldl
This, of course, assumes that /usr/local/ is where the Lua files are installed, which is probably true.
As for the tutorial you linked to, I think it may be very out of date. Besides liblualib no longer existing, there are individual functions to open each standard library. These are the luaopen_* functions. Here's the relevant 5.1 reference manual entry. (I assume you're using 5.1, since that seems to be the version available in the packages) As for a better tutorial, I suggest the Programming in Lua book. Unfortunately, it was written for Lua 5.0. It is still mostly relevant, but I suggest you look over the relevant sections of the 5.1 reference manual, too.

Related

How can I create and use my own static library in C?

I want to my make own library and have it use the same syntax as the standard C libraries as in
#include<mylib.h>
So that it looks like #include and some of the libraries that are included with C.
Can I make the library static as opposed to linking so that I can compile it in GCC without additional arguments, as if I were using another library like stdio.h or string.h?
This seems simple enough.
Develop the library (create as many source files as you need).
Build the source files into a shared library (.so) using a tool like CMAKE (which i strongly recommend).
Copy that library to your library path (i.e. /usr/lib)
Later on, all you have to do is import your lib: (i) in the source using #include<mylib.h>; (ii) when building (also using CMAKE) or using the flag (-lmylib) in the GCC compiler: gcc -lmylib myfiles.c -o myoutput.
In addition to #include "mylib.h", you need to add -lmylib command line to the compiler (more specifically linker) when using the library. I assume that the your library archive created through ar command is named as libmylib.a.
Usually, we do not write 'manually' build instructions, but we rely on tool that generates build chains. There are quite a lot of them, the most know are probably autotools and cmake (under Linux).
I would suggest you to have a look to cmake examples and/or documentation to get your code built.
There are quite a lot of differences between static and dynamic libs, and you will also need to package somehow your lib if you really want to use it like 'standard' lib (like libxml2, openssl, etc.)
A lot to say about it, but you should first have a look to 'how to build' your lib, and then see how to make it easy to use, IMHO.

Linker cannot find existing Static Library File

I have a Eclipse project using C programming language. I have been stuck with a problem related to linker error since two days now. I have checked various forums to find a solution. Tried a lot of the suggestions but could not resolve it. So as a last resort, i am asking question here. My main program MotorRun.c has code which calls functions in the static library FtMscLib_Static_LIBCMT_Release.Lib which is in Libs folder in the path C:\FT-Project\Common\Libs. I am using MinGW gcc compiler.
When i run the makefile, it generates an error:
c:/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/x86_64-w64-mingw32/4.9.1/../../../../x86_64-w64-mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot find -lC:\FT-Project\Common\Libs\FtMscLib_Static_LIBCMT_Release.Lib
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status
The code run by the makefile is
gcc "-LC:\\FT-Project\\Common\\Libs" -shared -o libRoboCopMinGW.exe "src\\MotorRun.o" "-lC:\\FT-Project\\Common\\Libs\\FtMscLib_Static_LIBCMT_Release.Lib"
By looking at the execution code, we can see that the paths and library name has been set correctly, but the linker just cannot find it so that it can link the library with my MotorRun.o object file. Hope someone can help me in finding a solution.
The program MotorRun.c is a very simple one, so i am not posting it here. But if necessary i can update it later. Thanks in advance!
The correct linker syntax is typically something like:
-Lpath_to_library_directory -lname
where the library filename (for a Windows static library) would be name.lib. So your above linker line needs to lose the .lib part. You may also need to prefix the -l argument with another argument -static, to instruct the linker to search for the static library FtMscLib_Static_LIBCMT_Release.Lib otherwise it might try to find the DLL instead.
By the way, there are heaps of posts on StackOverflow regarding the issue of static and dynamic linking with MinGW, so feel free to search for these also. The MinGW web pages also have numerous tips on the same topic.

How can I compile a library archive with a source code file with gcc?

TL;DR - I need to compile archive.a with test.o to make an executable.
Background - I am trying to call a function in a separate library from a software package I am modifying but the function (a string parser) is creating a segmentation violation. The failure is definitely happening in the library and the developer has asked for a test case where the error occurs. Rather than having him try to compile the rather large software package that I'm working on I'd rather just send him a simple program that calls the appropriate function (hopefully dying at the same place). His library makes use of several system libraries as well (lapack, cblas, etc.) so the linking needs to hit everything I think.
I can link to the .o files that are created when I make his library but of course they don't link to the appropriate system libraries.
This seems like it should be straight forward, but it's got me all flummoxed.
The .a extension indicates that it is a static library. So in order to link against it you can use the switches for the linking stage:
gcc -o myprog -L<path to your library> main.o ... -larchive
Generally you use -L to add the path where libraries are stored (unless it is in the current directory) and you use -l<libname> to sepecify a library. The libraryname is without extension. If the library is named libarchive.a you would still give -larchive.
If you want to specify the full name of the library, then you would use i.e. -l:libname.a
update
If the libraypath is /usr/lib/libmylibrary.a you would use
-L/usr/lib -lmylibrary

How to created a shared library (dylib) using automake that JNI/JNA can use?

How do I convince LibTools to generate a library identical to what gcc does automatically?
This works if I do things explicitly:
gcc -o libclique.dylib -shared disc.c phylip.c Slist.c clique.c
cp libclique.dylib [JavaTestDir]/libclique.dylib
But if I do:
Makefile libclique.la (which is what automake generates)
cp .libs/libclique.1.dylib [JavaTestDir]/libclique.dylib
Java finds the library but can't find the entry point.
I read the "How to create a shared library (.so) in an automake script?" thread and it helped a lot. I got the dylib created with a -shared flag (according to the generated Makefile). But when I try to use it from Java Native Access I get a "symbol not found" error.
Looking at the libclique.la that is generated by Makefile it doesn't seem to have any critical information in it, just looks to be link overloads and moving things around for the convenience of subsequent C/C++ compiler steps (which I don't have), so I would expect libclique.1.dylib to be a functioning dynamic library.
I'm guessing that is where I'm going wrong, but, given that JNA links directly to a dylib and is not compiled with it (per the example in the discussion cited above), it seems all the subsequent compilation steps described in the LibTools manual are moot.
Note: I'm testing on a Mac, but I'm going to have to do this on Windows and Linux machines also, which is why I'm trying to put this into Automake.
Note2: I'm using Eclipse for my Java development and, yes, I did import the dylib.
Thanks
You should be building a plugin and in particular pass
libclique_la_LDFLAGS = -avoid-version -module -shared -export-dynamic
This way you tell libtool you want a dynamically loadable module rather than a shared library (which for ELF are the same thing, but for Mach-O are not.)

How do I use "unity" to unit test C code on Mac (Lion)?

Let me start out by saying that I'm not a C developer and I know very little about actually writing real world C code. I've been doing some research to find a xUnit framework that I can use to write tests for C code and based on what I've found it seems like Unity is the one that I want to go with. It seems simple enough, but I really just don't know what to do after I download the zip file from Unity's website. It doesn't seem to have the normal configure/make/make install, and if it did, I'm not sure that is what I should be using anyway. It does, however, ship with some rake tasks, but none of those seemed to be any kind of "install" task. As a last resort I tried to just copy the 3 source files in with my code (which I really hope is not the right thing to do), but when I try that I get an error trying to compile my c file with gcc, but I think this should be working. Here is my set up:
src/
mycode.c
unity.c
unity.h
unity_internals.h
Here is the source for mycode.c
/* mycode.c */
#include "unity.h"
void test_sample(void)
{
TEST_ASSERT_EQUAL_INT(0, 0);
}
When I run gcc mycode.c I get:
Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
"_main", referenced from:
start in crt1.10.6.o
"_UnityAssertEqualNumber", referenced from:
_test_sample in ccyHByv6.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
(I get a similar error when I try to compile unity.c with gcc). Which I assume means that the code that ships with unity requires a different compiler than what I have which is:
i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.9.00)
or that maybe unity is not compatible with a 64 bit processor... (I'm running on Mac OS 10.7.3 with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor - another thing that may or may not be relavent is that I've got XCode Version 4.3 (4E109) and also Command Line Tools for XCode) At this point I'm just grasping at straws and I'm in way over my head.
My question is, what is the correct process to go through to take a 3rd party C library, such as Unity, and make it available to my C code? Do I need to install something like in Python or Ruby or add something to my path like in Java or something else? Shouldn't just dropping unity's code in with mine work? Am I doing something wrong or is Unity or both? I really just want to be able to test drive C code using Unity. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
First, try 'gcc *.c -o mytest'. This will compile all of the C source files into object files, and then link them together into the binary 'mytest'. Keep in mind that all C source files have to be compiled to object files before they can be linked together. (A library is just a bunch of packaged object files.)
If you had a unity library installed in /usr/lib, you could do something like 'gcc mycode.c -lunity -o mytest'. If you had a unity library sitting in the current directory, you might do 'gcc mycode.c ./unity.a -o mytest'. This tells the compiler to look for a file named 'unity.a' in the current directory. Some libraries build .so files ('shared object' files, similar to DLLs in Windows). Replacing 'unity.a' with 'unity.so' should work if that is the case. (I'm assuming a Unix/Linux environment here.)
As an alternative to Unity, look at Google Test, which can be used with C code. I know it is supported on the Mac as well. The primary benefit is a large and active community. More information on Google Test from another SO question: Is Google Test OK for testing C code?
I figured out my problem. It turns out that unity requires you to define a setup and a teardown function and if you do not, you will get errors similar to the one that I was running into.

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