Linking against older symbol version in a .so file - c

Using gcc and ld on x86_64 linux I need to link against a newer version of a library (glibc 2.14) but the executable needs to run on a system with an older version (2.5). Since the only incompatible symbol is memcpy (needing memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5 but the library providing memcpy#GLIBC_2.14), I would like to tell the linker that instead of taking the default version for memcpy, it should take an old version I specify.
I found a quite arkward way to do it: simply specify a copy of the old .so file at the linker command line. This works fine, but I don't like the idea of having multiple .so files (I could only make it work by specifying all old libraries I link to that also have references to memcpy) checked into the svn and needed by my build system.
So I am searching for a way to tell the linker to take the old versioned symbol.
Alternatives that don't work (well) for me are:
Using asm .symver (as seen on Web Archive of Trevor Pounds' Blog) since this would require me to make sure the symver is before all the code that is using memcpy, which would be very hard (complex codebase with 3rd party code)
Maintaining a build environment with the old libraries; simply because I want to develop on my desktop system and it would be a pita to sync stuff around in our network.
When thinking about all the jobs a linker does, it doesn't seem like a hard thing to imlpement, after all it has some code to figure out the default version of a symbol too.
Any other ideas that are on the same complexity level as a simple linker command line (like creating a simple linker script etc.) are welcome too, as long as they are not weird hacks like editing the resulting binary...
edit:
To conserve this for the future readers, additionally to the below ideas I found the option --wrap to the linker, which might be useful sometimes too.

I found the following working solution. First create file memcpy.c:
#include <string.h>
/* some systems do not have newest memcpy##GLIBC_2.14 - stay with old good one */
asm (".symver memcpy, memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5");
void *__wrap_memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n)
{
return memcpy(dest, src, n);
}
No additional CFLAGS needed to compile this file. Then link your program with -Wl,--wrap=memcpy.

Just link memcpy statically - pull memcpy.o out of libc.a ar x /path/to/libc.a memcpy.o (whatever version - memcpy is pretty much a standalone function) and include it in your final link. Note that static linking may complicate licensing issues if your project is distributed to the public and not open-source.
Alternatively, you could simply implement memcpy yourself, though the hand-tuned assembly version in glibc is likely to be more efficient
Note that memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5 is mapped to memmove (old versions of memcpy consistently copied in a predictable direction, which led to it sometimes being misused when memmove should have been used), and this is the only reason for the version bump - you could simply replace memcpy with memmove in your code for this specific case.
Or you could go to static linking, or you could ensure that all systems on your network have the same or better version than your build machine.

I had a similar issue. A third party library we use needs the old memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5. My solution is an extended approach #anight posted.
I also warp the memcpy command, but i had to use a slightly different approach, since the solution #anight posted did not work for me.
memcpy_wrap.c:
#include <stddef.h>
#include <string.h>
asm (".symver wrap_memcpy, memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5");
void *wrap_memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n) {
return memcpy(dest, src, n);
}
memcpy_wrap.map:
GLIBC_2.2.5 {
memcpy;
};
Build the wrapper:
gcc -c memcpy_wrap.c -o memcpy_wrap.o
Now finally when linking the program add
-Wl,--version-script memcpy_wrap.map
memcpy_wrap.o
so that you will end up with something like:
g++ <some flags> -Wl,--version-script memcpy_wrap.map <some .o files> memcpy_wrap.o <some libs>

I had a similar problem. Trying to install some oracle components on RHEL 7.1, I got this:
$ gcc -o /some/oracle/bin/foo .... -L/some/oracle/lib ...
/some/oracle/lib/libfoo.so: undefined reference to `memcpy#GLIBC_2.14'
It seems that (my) RHEL's glibc only defines memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5:
$ readelf -Ws /usr/lib/x86_64-redhat-linux6E/lib64/libc_real.so | fgrep memcpy#
367: 000000000001bfe0 16 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT 8 memcpy##GLIBC_2.2.5
1166: 0000000000019250 16 FUNC WEAK DEFAULT 8 wmemcpy##GLIBC_2.2.5
So, I managed to get around this, by first creating a memcpy.c file without wrapping, as follows:
#include <string.h>
asm (".symver old_memcpy, memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5"); // hook old_memcpy as memcpy#2.2.5
void *old_memcpy(void *, const void *, size_t );
void *memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n) // then export memcpy
{
return old_memcpy(dest, src, n);
}
and a memcpy.map file that exports our memcpy as memcpy#GLIBC_2.14:
GLIBC_2.14 {
memcpy;
};
I then compiled my own memcpy.c into a shared lib like this:
$ gcc -shared -fPIC -c memcpy.c
$ gcc -shared -fPIC -Wl,--version-script memcpy.map -o libmemcpy-2.14.so memcpy.o -lc
, moved libmemcpy-2.14.so into /some/oracle/lib (pointed to by -L arguments in my linking), and linked again by
$ gcc -o /some/oracle/bin/foo .... -L/some/oracle/lib ... /some/oracle/lib/libmemcpy-2.14.so -lfoo ...
(which compiled without errors) and verified it by:
$ ldd /some/oracle/bin/foo
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff9f3fe000)
/some/oracle/lib/libmemcpy-2.14.so (0x00007f963a63e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f963a428000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f963a20c000)
librt.so.1 => /lib64/librt.so.1 (0x00007f963a003000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9639c42000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f963aa5b000)
This worked for me. I hope it does it for you, too.

I'm clearly a little late responding to this but I recently upgraded (more reasons to never upgrade) my Linux OS to XUbuntu 14.04 which came with the new libc. I compile a shared library on my machine which is used by clients who, for whatever legitimate reasons, have not upgraded their environment from 10.04. The shared library I compiled no longer loaded in their environment because gcc put a dependency on memcpy glibc v. 2.14 (or higher). Let's leave aside the insanity of this. The workaround across my whole project was three fold:
added to my gcc cflags: -include glibc_version_nightmare.h
created the glibc_version_nightmare.h
created a perl script to verify the symbols in the .so
glibc_version_nightmare.h:
#if defined(__GNUC__) && defined(__LP64__) /* only under 64 bit gcc */
#include <features.h> /* for glibc version */
#if defined(__GLIBC__) && (__GLIBC__ == 2) && (__GLIBC_MINOR__ >= 14)
/* force mempcy to be from earlier compatible system */
__asm__(".symver memcpy,memcpy#GLIBC_2.2.5");
#endif
#undef _FEATURES_H /* so gets reloaded if necessary */
#endif
perl script fragment:
...
open SYMS, "nm $flags $libname |";
my $status = 0;
sub complain {
my ($symbol, $verstr) = #_;
print STDERR "ERROR: $libname $symbol requires $verstr\n";
$status = 1;
}
while (<SYMS>) {
next unless /\#\#GLIBC/;
chomp;
my ($symbol, $verstr) = (m/^\s+.\s(.*)\#\#GLIBC_(.*)/);
die "unable to parse version from $libname in $_\n"
unless $verstr;
my #ver = split(/\./, $verstr);
complain $symbol, $verstr
if ($ver[0] > 2 || $ver[1] > 10);
}
close SYMS;
exit $status;

Minimal runnable self contained example
GitHub upstream.
main.c
#include <assert.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "a.h"
#if defined(V1)
__asm__(".symver a,a#LIBA_1");
#elif defined(V2)
__asm__(".symver a,a#LIBA_2");
#endif
int main(void) {
#if defined(V1)
assert(a() == 1);
#else
assert(a() == 2);
#endif
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
a.c
#include "a.h"
__asm__(".symver a1,a#LIBA_1");
int a1(void) {
return 1;
}
/* ## means "default version". */
__asm__(".symver a2,a##LIBA_2");
int a2(void) {
return 2;
}
a.h
#ifndef A_H
#define A_H
int a(void);
#endif
a.map
LIBA_1{
global:
a;
local:
*;
};
LIBA_2{
global:
a;
local:
*;
};
Makefile
CC := gcc -pedantic-errors -std=c89 -Wall -Wextra
.PHONY: all clean run
all: main.out main1.out main2.out
run: all
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./main.out
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./main1.out
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./main2.out
main.out: main.c libcirosantilli_a.so
$(CC) -L'.' main.c -o '$#' -lcirosantilli_a
main1.out: main.c libcirosantilli_a.so
$(CC) -DV1 -L'.' main.c -o '$#' -lcirosantilli_a
main2.out: main.c libcirosantilli_a.so
$(CC) -DV2 -L'.' main.c -o '$#' -lcirosantilli_a
a.o: a.c
$(CC) -fPIC -c '$<' -o '$#'
libcirosantilli_a.so: a.o
$(CC) -Wl,--version-script,a.map -L'.' -shared a.o -o '$#'
libcirosantilli_a.o: a.c
$(CC) -fPIC -c '$<' -o '$#'
clean:
rm -rf *.o *.a *.so *.out
Tested on Ubuntu 16.04.

This workaround seem not compatible with -flto compile option.
My solution is calling memmove. memove does exactly the same jobs than memcpy.
The only difference is when src and dest zone overlap, memmove is safe and memcpy is unpredictable. So we can safely always call memmove instead memcpy
#include <string.h>
#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif
void *__wrap_memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n)
{
return memmove(dest, src, n);
}
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

For nim-lang, I elaborated on a solution I found using the C compiler --include= flag as follows:
Create a file symver.h with:
__asm__(".symver fcntl,fcntl#GLIBC_2.4");
Build your program with nim c ---passC:--include=symver.h
As for me I'm cross compiling too. I compile with nim c --cpu:arm --os:linux --passC:--include=symver.h ... and I can get symbol versions using arm-linux-gnueabihf-objdump -T ../arm-libc.so.6 | grep fcntl
I had to remove ~/.cache/nim at some point. And it seems to work.

I think you can get away with making a simple C file containing the symver statement and perhaps a dummy function calling memcpy. Then you just have to ensure that the resulting object file is the first file given to linker.

I suggest you either link memcpy() statically; or find the source of memcpy( ) and compile it as your own library.

It may caused by old ld (gnu link) version.
For following simple problem:
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc,char **argv)
{
char buf[5];
memset(buf,0,sizeof(buf));
printf("ok\n");
return 0;
}
When I use ld 2.19.1, memset is relocated to: memset##GLIBC_2.0, and cause crash.
After upgraded to 2.25, it is: memset#plt, and crash solved.

We had a similar issue, but instead of one older GLIBC symbol, we have to provide in our .so libs a mix of newer ones with necessary functionality and older ones our libs may be referencing but are not available. This situation occurs because we are shipping to customers high performance codec libs with vectorized math functions and we cannot impose requirements on what version of OS distro, gcc, or glibc they use. As long as their machine has appropriate SSE and AVX extensions, the libs should work. Here is what we did:
Include glibc 2.35 libmvec.so.1 and libm.so.6 files in a separate subfolder. These contain the necessary vectorized math functions. In a "hello codec" application example, we reference these in the link target depending on what distro, gcc, and glibc versions are found by the Makefile. More or less, for anything with glibc v2.35 or higher the high performance libs are referenced, otherwise slower libs are referenced.
To deal with missing symbols -- the subject of this thread -- we used a modification of Ortwin Anermeier's solution, in turn based on anight's solution, but without using the -Wl,--wrap=xxx option.
The .map file looks like:
GLIBC_2.35 {
hypot;
:
: (more function symbols as needed)
};
GLIBC_2.32 {
exp10;
:
: (more function symbols as needed)
};
:
: (more version nodes as needed)
and in a "stublib" .so we have:
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <math.h>
asm(".symver hypot_235, hypot#GLIBC_2.35");
asm(".symver exp10_232, exp10f#GLIBC_2.32");
/* ... more as needed */
double hypot_235(double x, double y) { return hypot(x, y); }
double exp10_232(double x) { return exp10(x); }
/* ... more as needed */
-lstublib.so is then included in the app build as the last link item, even after -lm.
This answer and this one also offer clues, but they not handling the general case of a .so flexible enough to be used on a wide variety of systems.

Related

Where do Linux shells look for interpreters for ELF binaries? [duplicate]

So everyone probably knows that glibc's /lib/libc.so.6 can be executed in the shell like a normal executable in which cases it prints its version information and exits. This is done via defining an entry point in the .so. For some cases it could be interesting to use this for other projects too. Unfortunately, the low-level entry point you can set by ld's -e option is a bit too low-level: the dynamic loader is not available so you cannot call any proper library functions. glibc for this reason implements the write() system call via a naked system call in this entry point.
My question now is, can anyone think of a nice way how one could bootstrap a full dynamic linker from that entry point so that one could access functions from other .so's?
Update 2: see Andrew G Morgan's slightly more complicated solution which does work for any GLIBC (that solution is also used in libc.so.6 itself (since forever), which is why you can run it as ./libc.so.6 (it prints version info when invoked that way)).
Update 1: this no longer works with newer GLIBC versions:
./a.out: error while loading shared libraries: ./pie.so: cannot dynamically load position-independent executable
Original answer from 2009:
Building your shared library with -pie option appears to give you everything you want:
/* pie.c */
#include <stdio.h>
int foo()
{
printf("in %s %s:%d\n", __func__, __FILE__, __LINE__);
return 42;
}
int main()
{
printf("in %s %s:%d\n", __func__, __FILE__, __LINE__);
return foo();
}
/* main.c */
#include <stdio.h>
extern int foo(void);
int main()
{
printf("in %s %s:%d\n", __func__, __FILE__, __LINE__);
return foo();
}
$ gcc -fPIC -pie -o pie.so pie.c -Wl,-E
$ gcc main.c ./pie.so
$ ./pie.so
in main pie.c:9
in foo pie.c:4
$ ./a.out
in main main.c:6
in foo pie.c:4
$
P.S. glibc implements write(3) via system call because it doesn't have anywhere else to call (it is the lowest level already). This has nothing to do with being able to execute libc.so.6.
I have been looking to add support for this to pam_cap.so, and found this question. As #EmployedRussian notes in a follow-up to their own post, the accepted answer stopped working at some point. It took a while to figure out how to make this work again, so here is a worked example.
This worked example involves 5 files to show how things work with some corresponding tests.
First, consider this trivial program (call it empty.c):
int main(int argc, char **argv) { return 0; }
Compiling it, we can see how it resolves the dynamic symbols on my system as follows:
$ gcc -o empty empty.c
$ objcopy --dump-section .interp=/dev/stdout empty ; echo
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
$ DL_LOADER=/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
That last line sets a shell variable for use later.
Here are the two files that build my example shared library:
/* multi.h */
void multi_main(void);
void multi(const char *caller);
and
/* multi.c */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "multi.h"
void multi(const char *caller) {
printf("called from %s\n", caller);
}
__attribute__((force_align_arg_pointer))
void multi_main(void) {
multi(__FILE__);
exit(42);
}
const char dl_loader[] __attribute__((section(".interp"))) =
DL_LOADER ;
(Update 2021-11-13: The forced alignment is to help __i386__ code be SSE compatible - without it we get hard to debug glibc SIGSEGV crashes.)
We can compile and run it as follows:
$ gcc -fPIC -shared -o multi.so -DDL_LOADER="\"${DL_LOADER}\"" multi.c -Wl,-e,multi_main
$ ./multi.so
called from multi.c
$ echo $?
42
So, this is a .so that can be executed as a stand alone binary. Next, we validate that it can be loaded as shared object.
/* opener.c */
#include <dlfcn.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
void *handle = dlopen("./multi.so", RTLD_NOW);
if (handle == NULL) {
perror("no multi.so load");
exit(1);
}
void (*multi)(const char *) = dlsym(handle, "multi");
multi(__FILE__);
}
That is we dynamically load the shared-object and run a function from it:
$ gcc -o opener opener.c -ldl
$ ./opener
called from opener.c
Finally, we link against this shared object:
/* main.c */
#include "multi.h"
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
multi(__FILE__);
}
Where we compile and run it as follows:
$ gcc main.c -o main multi.so
$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./ ./main
called from main.c
(Note, because multi.so isn't in a standard system library location, we need to override where the runtime looks for the shared object file with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.)
I suppose you'd have your ld -e point to an entry point which would then use the dlopen() family of functions to find and bootstrap the rest of the dynamic linker. Of course you'd have to ensure that dlopen() itself was either statically linked or you might have to implement enough of your own linker stub to get at it (using system call interfaces such as mmap() just as libc itself is doing.
None of that sounds "nice" to me. In fact just the thought of reading the glibc sources (and the ld-linux source code, as one example) enough to assess the size of the job sounds pretty hoary to me. It might also be a portability nightmare. There may be major differences between how Linux implements ld-linux and how the linkages are done under OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and so on. (I don't know).

No output from split up source, but no warnings either, when omitting an included file

I ran into an issue invoking gcc where if I omit a library .c file, I got no output from the binary (unexpected behavior change) but since this is a missing dependency, I kind of expected the compile to fail (or at least warn)...
Example for this issue is from Head First C page 185 (but is not errata, see my compile mis-step below):
encrypt.h:
void encrypt(char *message);
encrypt.c:
#include "encrypt.h"
void encrypt(char *message)
{
// char c; errata
while (*message) {
*message = *message ^ 31;
message++;
}
}
message_hider.c:
#include <stdio.h>
#include "encrypt.h"
int main() {
char msg[80];
while (fgets(msg, 80, stdin)) {
encrypt(msg);
printf("%s", msg);
}
}
NOW, everything works fine IF I faithfully compile as per exercise instruction:
gcc message_hider.c encrypt.c -o message_hider
... but bad fortune led me to compile only the main .c file, like so:
$ gcc message_hider.c -o message_hider
This surprisingly successfully builds, even if I added -Wall -Wextra -Wshadow -g.
Also surprisingly, it silently fails, with no output from encrypt() function:
$ ./message_hider < ./encrypt.h
$
my gcc is:
$ /usr/bin/gcc --version
Apple clang version 13.1.6 (clang-1316.0.21.2.5)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin21.6.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
Mindful that even with a Makefile, I could "still" end up with a missing .c file due to a mistake in the recipe.
Q: Is it possible to force a hard error if I forget to tell gcc about a .c file?
As I noted in a (misspelled) comment:
There is probably a function encrypt() in the system library.
On a Mac, man -s 3 encrypt shows:
CRYPT(3) BSD Library Functions Manual CRYPT(3)
NAME
crypt, encrypt, setkey -- DES encryption
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
char *
crypt(const char *key, const char *salt);
void
encrypt(char *block, int edflag);
#include <stdlib.h>
void
setkey(const char *key);
…
The encrypt() and setkey() functions are part of POSIX, so they'll be available on most POSIX-like systems. Curiously, as shown in the manual page extract, the functions are declared in separate headers — <unistd.h> for encrypt() and
<stdlib.h> for setkey(). There's probably a good (enough) historical reason for the disconnect.
You should have received a compiler warning about the function being undeclared — if you didn't, you are presumably compiling using the C90 standard. That is very old and should not still be being taught; you need to be learning C11 or C18 (almost the same).
Since C99, the C standard requires functions to be declared before use — you can define a static function without pre-declaring it, but all other functions (except main()) should be declared before they are used or defined. You can use GCC compiler warning options such as -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes (along with -Wold-style-declaration and -Wold-style-definition) to trigger warnings. Of these, -Wold-style-declaration is enabled by -Wextra (and none by -Wall). Be aware: as noted in the comments, clang does not support -Wold-style-declaration though true GCC (not Apple's clang masquerading as gcc) does support it.

How to make LoadLibrary to show error dialog when there are missing dependencies

Suppose we have two dynamic libraries libfoo.dll and libbar.dll, given that libbar.dll depends on libfoo.dll. Further we compile an executable test.exe that loads our libbar.dll using WinAPI function LoadLibrary().
If we run text.exe on Windows XP with missing libfoo.dll, LoadLibrary() shows dialog box alerting than libfoo.dll is actually missing and sets LastError to ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND (126).
If we run same text.exe in same conditions on Windows 10, LoadLibrary() sets LastError to ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND only, no dialog box appears.
In both cases ErrorMode is 0. So is there any possibility to catch a name of missing dependency in LoadLibrary() calling process, or, at least, how to make LoadLibrary() show error dialog on Windows 10?
Here is a sample code (using MinGW):
foo.c
int foo(int a, int b)
{
return a + b;
}
Compile with: gcc foo.c -o libfoo.dll -fPIC -shared
bar.c
int foo(int a, int b);
int bar(int a, int b)
{
return foo(a, b);
}
Compile with: gcc bar.c -o libbar.dll -fPIC -shared -L. -lfoo
test.c
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
typedef int (*pfn)(int a, int b);
int main()
{
SetErrorMode(0);
HMODULE hmod = LoadLibrary("libbar.dll");
if(!hmod)
{
fprintf(stderr, "error loading library %d\n", GetLastError());
return 1;
}
pfn bar = (pfn)GetProcAddress(hmod, "bar");
if(bar)
{
fprintf(stdout, "bar(3, 1) = %d\n", bar(3, 1));
}
else
{
fprintf(stderr, "can't load bar foonction\n");
}
FreeLibrary(hmod);
return 0;
}
Compile with: gcc test.c -o test
At the moment it seems like there is no elegant solution to the question posed.
As #DavidHeffernan noted in the comments to the original post, the problem should be solved on a fundamentally different level. As LoadLibrary() behaves just like it should behave, the key is the proper installation and error handling.
However, if the one needs to explicitly catch missing dependencies of the dynamically loaded libraries, the techniques provided by #IInspectable and #eryksun could be applied:
enabling Delay-Loded DLLs for the libraries that are going to be dynamically loaded. Such an approach provides helper callbacks for each dependent module, so missing dependencies could be handled in place. The main disadvantage of this approach is that the target library should be recompiled with proper linker flags;
the helper utility that dumps debug strings from the application could be written (see #eryksun comment to the original post for details). Disadvantages: besides the need of writing an additional module it also includes some registry manipulations.

making small c project

everybody out there
i write a very simple c code which is following:
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int a,b,s,m,d;
system("clear");
int a =20;
int b =40;
s=sum(a,b);
m=mul(a,b);
d=div(a,b);
printf("\n the sum of given no. = %d\nThe product of given no. = %d\nThe division of given no = %d",s,m,d);
return 0;
}
the name of the file is exp.c
than i write the following code:
#include<stdio.h>
int sum( int x ,int y)
{
int z;
z=x+y;
return z;
}
i saved it as sum.c
than i write the following code :
#include<stdio.h>
int mul( int z ,int u)
{
int v ;
v=z+u;
return v;
}
save it as mul.c
than i write the following code
#include<stdio.h>
int div (int a, int b)
{
int f;
f=a/b;
return f;
}
save it as div .c
now my problem is that i want to use all file as a single project.
i want exp.c use the function defined in mul.c,div.c,sum.c
i want to know how to do this?
how to make library form mul.c,div.c,sum.c?
how to associate these library with exp.c ?
can any body explain me the detail process of making project ?
i 'm using ubuntu as my operating system. please help me
The easiest way is to not make a library, but just compile them all together into a single executable:
$ gcc -o myprogram sum.c mul.c div.c
This has the drawback that you will re-compile all the code all the time, so as the files grow large, the penalty (build time) goes up since even changing just div.c (for example) will force you to re-compile sum.c and mul.c too.
The next step is to compile them separately, and leave the object files around. For this, we can use a Makefile like so:
myprogram: sum.o mul.o div.o
sum.o: sum.c
mul.o: mul.c
div.o: div.c
This will leave the object files around, and when you type make the make tool will compare the timestamps of the object files to those of the C files, and only re-compile that which changed. Note that for the above to work, there must be a physical TAB after each colon.
There are a few steps you need to do for this:
Declare the functions in your main file When you compile your main file (exp.c) the compiler will output an error because he does not know what kind of functions sum, mul etc. are. So you have to declare them via int sum( int x ,int y); in this file. A more general approach (which is clearer) is to write all the functions you have in a file (not all, but those that will be accessed from other files) into a header file and then include the header file.
Compile each file You need to compile each file. This can be done via a simple gcc -c mul.c etc. This will create a mul.o - a machine language file.
Link them Once every file is compiled you need to put them together in one executable. This is done via gcc -o outputname mul.o sum.o ...
Note that steps 2 and 3 can also be combined, I just wanted to explain the steps clearly. This is usually done via a Makefile to speed things up a bit
Firstly, you will need to declare each of your functions in a corresponding header file (you don't have to use header files, but it's the most common way of doing this). For instance, div.h might look like:
#ifndef DIV_H_
#define DIV_H_
int div(int a, int b);
#endif
You will then to #include the header files in source files where the corresponding functions are used.
Then, to compile and link:
gcc -o my_prog exp.c sum.c mul.c div.c
As others have suggested, you make want to read up on Make, as it helps simplify the build process once your project gets more complicated.
You need to declare the functions in the file they are used. The common way to do this is to put the declarations in a header file, lets say funcs.h:
#ifndef FUNCS_H
#define FUNCS_H
int sum( int, int );
int mul( int, int );
int div( int, int );
#endif
Now #include this in your main source file. Then to build the executable:
gcc exp.c sum.c div.c mul.c
To create a library, you need to compile the files separately:
gcc -c sum.c div.c mul.c
and then run ar to build the library:
ar rvs sum.o div.o mul.o mylib.a
And then use it from gcc:
gcc exp.c mylib.a
A good practise to organize the code could be put all the functions prototypes inside a .h file, and the implementations into a related .c file, using include guards to avoid multiple inclusion.
Example module.h file:
#ifndef MODULE_NAME
#define MODULE_NAME
void module_func();
#endif
Example module.c :
#include "module.h"
void module_func(){
//implementation
}
read up on make - this will answer your questions about building/compilation/etc
You should have a .h file that will include your function prototypes. It's not strictly needed (as your functions return int) but you must get in the habit now, because it won't come easy later

Embedding binary blobs using gcc mingw

I am trying to embed binary blobs into an exe file. I am using mingw gcc.
I make the object file like this:
ld -r -b binary -o binary.o input.txt
I then look objdump output to get the symbols:
objdump -x binary.o
And it gives symbols named:
_binary_input_txt_start
_binary_input_txt_end
_binary_input_txt_size
I then try and access them in my C program:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
extern char _binary_input_txt_start[];
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *p;
p = _binary_input_txt_start;
return 0;
}
Then I compile like this:
gcc -o test.exe test.c binary.o
But I always get:
undefined reference to _binary_input_txt_start
Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?
In your C program remove the leading underscore:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
extern char binary_input_txt_start[];
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *p;
p = binary_input_txt_start;
return 0;
}
C compilers often (always?) seem to prepend an underscore to extern names. I'm not entirely sure why that is - I assume that there's some truth to this wikipedia article's claim that
It was common practice for C compilers to prepend a leading underscore to all external scope program identifiers to avert clashes with contributions from runtime language support
But it strikes me that if underscores were prepended to all externs, then you're not really partitioning the namespace very much. Anyway, that's a question for another day, and the fact is that the underscores do get added.
From ld man page:
--leading-underscore
--no-leading-underscore
For most targets default symbol-prefix is an underscore and is defined in target's description. By this option it is possible to disable/enable the default underscore symbol-prefix.
so
ld -r -b binary -o binary.o input.txt --leading-underscore
should be solution.
I tested it in Linux (Ubuntu 10.10).
Resouce file:
input.txt
gcc (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) 4.4.5 [generates ELF executable, for Linux]
Generates symbol _binary__input_txt_start.
Accepts symbol _binary__input_txt_start (with underline).
i586-mingw32msvc-gcc (GCC) 4.2.1-sjlj (mingw32-2) [generates PE executable, for Windows]
Generates symbol _binary__input_txt_start.
Accepts symbol binary__input_txt_start (without underline).
Apparently this feature is not present in OSX's ld, so you have to do it totally differently with a custom gcc flag that they added, and you can't reference the data directly, but must do some runtime initialization to get the address.
So it might be more portable to make yourself an assembler source file which includes the binary at build time, a la this answer.

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