I'm porting an old C++ project to run on RHEL 6.7 with gcc 4.4.7. The code was originally made to run on an SGI machine.
I have a library .a which is presumed to have been compiled on the old machine (and thus there's no hope of running it in the new one) however, along with this .a file I also have the headers and source files. I am assuming that these are the ones that are used to make the .a file. The Makefile that was used is now long gone, I just have the source code.
My question is, is there a way to "reverse engineer" the library? I would like to know what functions the .a library contains so I can make it on my machine.
I will add that I am new to static and shared libraries so I'm not entirely sure what the .a file contains or how it is any different from including the headers.
Update:
I have looked into the included code and realized that the C files only work to interface with functions defined using Fortran95. I think that now I'm supposed to build the Fortran95 codebase and somehow interface that with the C code. Once I do that I will have a library that should (hopefully) compile in my native system. How can I do this?
Related
I am trying to cross compile some dependency libs for RaspberryPi target system, and host system is Linux with GCC compiler. For example, let's say that one of those libs has dependency on linkage stage and being linked with one of the system's static or dynamic libraries.
How this case is resolved by linker? (Because those .a or .so files can be different on target system, so probably program on RaspberryPi will crash in this case). How to make it work in a right way?
The build environment that the cross-compiler provides is more accurately described as a cross-toolchain. It needs to provide everything you need: Not just the compiler, but also the assembler, linker, and all run-time support libraries. That includes a C library (maybe glibc, maybe something else), the GCC run-time library (libgcc and libgcc_s), and the C++ run-time library (libstdc++). But the build environment also needs copies of all the libraries your software needs to build, typically both header files and static libraries or dynamic shared objects for the target. In particular, you cannot use the installed header files on the host because they might have the wrong definitions and declarations for the target.
Some programmers simply copy their dependencies (which are not system libraries) into their source tree, so that the cross-build environment can stay minimal. But then these libraries have to be tracked and updated as part of the project, which can be cumbersome.
I am building Go code that uses CGo heavily and this code must be compiled into a shared or static library (static is highly preferred). (code for reference)
It all works just fine on Linux and Mac, but on Windows it fails on linker stage either saying that all 4 modes (c-shared, shared, c-archive, archive) are not available or if invoke go tool link -shared manually complains about missing windows specific instructions.
My understanding is that all I need to build usable lib.a is to compile everything I will use into object files (*.o) and then put it through ar to produce usable static library.
Now the question is whether I can completely skip Go's linker and based on prepared .o files create .a manually?
How would I go about doing that if that is even possible?
Looks like gcc on windows is unable to automatically discover necessary shared libraries. The problem was caused by GCC and not by Go.
Although for compiling Go I had to use self-compiled master tip as current release (1.6.2) does not support shared/static libraries on windows/amd64.
Manually feeding gcc with each shared library (ntdll, winmm etc) in default location (C:\Windows\SysWOW64) has fixed the problem.
How to build a .bundle from source code?
This might sound like a simple problem but it has been hurdling me for a week...
Here is my problem:
I have a bunch of .c and .h files that are organized in a folder and its sub folders. The source code was written and compiled with gcc make and tested by many other make tools. The source code has some utilities and command line tools and it has more code that serve as library for those utilities and tools. It is the files that serve as libraries that I want to reuse. (By library I don't mean static library or something, I just mean that some .c and .h files in certain subfolders provide functions that can be called by some other .c files. I want to be able to call those functions, too)
Yet my problem is more complex than that: I need to build those .c and .h into a bundle to reuse it. I am not writing my application in C; I am developing in Unity and Unity can only take in .bundle files on Mac OS.
Here is my goal:
Organize the source code folder in a proper way so that I can build them into a bundle in Xcode 4.
Here is where I got stuck:
When building the project I got the following error:
Duplicate symbol _main in
/Users/zeningqu/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ccn-cfygrtkrshubpofnfxalwimtyniq/Build/Intermediates/ccn.build/Debug/ccn.build/Objects-normal/i386/ccndsmoketest.o
and
/Users/zeningqu/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ccn-cfygrtkrshubpofnfxalwimtyniq/Build/Intermediates/ccn.build/Debug/ccn.build/Objects-normal/i386/ccnd_main.o
for architecture i386
I can relate to this error because I can find lots of main entries in the source code. Most of them are test utilities.
Here is what I tried:
I tried removing all those utility .c files but with no luck. The error is still there. I delete and delete until some files cannot find the definition of the function they are calling. So I had to stop there.
Though I wasn't able to build a bundle I was able to build a C/C++ static library (with an .a extension). After I got the .a file I tried to put it into another Xcode project and tried to build it into a bundle. I could build a bundle in that way, but then I had problem accessing the content of the bundle. How do I call functions defined in a .a static library if that library is hidden in a bundle? I read about Apple's documentation which says:
Note: Some Xcode targets (such as shell tools and static libraries) do
not result in the creation of a bundle or package. This is normal and
there is no need to create bundles specifically for these target
types. The resulting binaries generated for those targets are intended
to be used as is.
(quoted from: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFBundles/AboutBundles/AboutBundles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000123i-CH100-SW1)
Here is what I thought about:
I thought about replacing all main with something like main_sth. But the source code was not written by me so I didn't want to modify it. (It just doesn't feel like a proper way of doing things to me...)
I learnt that Xcode has gcc compiler built in. So I guess if gcc can make it, so can Xcode? It's just a wild guess - I am not familiar with Xcode and gcc.
Here is a summary of my questions:
Is there a way to properly organize a pile of code previously compiled and made by gcc make so that they can be built into an Xcode bundle?
Is it meaningful to put a .a library in an Xcode project and build it into a bundle? If it is meaningful, how do I call functions defined in .a after it is built into a bundle?
Is it proper to just replace all main() entries with something else?
Alright I think I have figured out at least one solution to the problem.
The duplicate main error was caused by a bunch of main entries in my source code. When the code was compiled by gcc make, I guess the author defined a sort of compilation order so that duplicate mains won't be an issue. (If you know how to do this, please let me know. I barely know make tools.) But when I just add the entire source code folder into my Xcode project, of course Xcode would complain during linking...
As I was unwilling to modify the source code (because the source code library is not developed by me), I decided to use another strategy to walk around this problem.
If your duplicate main error was reported from your own code, you can stop reading here. But if you are like me, with a bunch of gcc compiled source code and badly need a bundle yet don't know what to do, I may be able to help.
Okay here is what I did:
I set up an empty workspace.
I built a C/C++ static library project.
Import my entire source code folder into the static library project.
Set some header search path for the static library project.
Build the static library project. (Now I have a .a library which I could link against)
I set up another project, with a bundle target.
At the bundle project -> Build Phases -> Link Binary with Libraries, add the .a library that I just built.
At the bundle project -> edit scheme -> Build, add the static library project to the scheme and move it up the list so that it is built prior to my bundle project.
Then add .h files of my library project to my bundle project as references.
After that, add a .c file in my bundle project that basically functions as a wrapper. I picked a function that I want to call in Unity, wrote a wrapper function in the new .c file, and was able to build the bundle.
After several trial and error, I was able to import the bundle into Unity and was able to call the test function from Unity.
I was really excited about this! Though it's not completed yet I think this gives me hope and I am confident I can use the source code now! And the best thing about this solution is that I don't have to modify the library code developed by others. Whenever they update their code, I just update my .a library and that's it!
Though I have listed 11 steps I still feel that there are lots of details that I missed. So here are my references:
I followed this tutorial to build my source code into a static library: http://www.ccnx.org/?post_type=incsub_wiki&p=1315
I followed this blog to link static library against my bundle code and twist build phases and search headers: http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/04/04/using-open-source-static-libraries-in-xcode-4/
I followed this doc to import my bundle to Unity3D Pro as a plugin: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Plugins.html
I strongly recommend the second reference because that's what solved my problem!
Though the problem is almost solved there are still a few things that I haven't figured out:
I don't know if a wrapper function is at all necessary. I will try this out tomorrow and come back to update.
-- I am coming back to update: the wrapper function is NOT necessary. Just make sure you have all the headers in your bundle project and you will be able to use all the data structures and call functions defined in your headers.
I haven't used NSBundle class though I read a few docs about it. Previously I was thinking about using that class to access my .a library encapsulated in my bundle, but as I found the solution I wrote above, I didn't try the class out.
Lastly, if you have better solution, please don't hesitate to let me know!
I tried to follow the steps in the accepted answer, but had no luck. In the end, I realised step 10 needed to be modified slightly:
Create a dummy.c under (.bundle) project and the dummy.c can just be totally empty.
Remove the setting for the library you want to link inside Link Binary With Libraries
Instead use -Wl,-force_load,$(CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR)/libYourLib.a or -all_load to Other Linker Flags
PS: And also can use sub-project instead of workspace. and use Target Dependencies instead of Edit Scheme to achieve the same effect.
We have a software project which has the primary purpose of providing a library and API. We also provide example programs and utilities that use this library.
So, let's say that I have built and installed our library. When I run valgrind on one of the example / utility programs, I obviously see references to functions in the library. The issue is that it doesn't provide line numbers, and I would like it to.
Is there a way to tell Valgrind to reference source files that aren't obviously part of an executable, but are part of the source code for a library that is linked-in to the executable?
Thanks!
Make sure that you are compiling shared library with -g to add debug information. This should be enough for Valgrind to reference source files. See http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/faq.html#faq.unhelpful for more information.
I'm using Visual Studio .NET 2003, and I'm trying to port code I've written and compiled/run successfully in Linux GCC to Windows.
I'm a newbie when using VS. I've created a new project, and added all the .c and .h files I have into the project by Project -> Add Existing Items, then chose all the .c and .h files.
I'm not familiar with how exactly compilers and linkers etc work, but is there a difference between how VS and gcc compile/link #include files? My habit of programming in Linux has been to have one main.c file, and #include all other .h or .c files that I need. Then I would only compile the main.c file. But in VS, it seems as if the #include files are not "seen" by the program, because I'm getting errors that tell me certain structures or variables were not declared, even though they are in my user-defined header files.
I'm also getting errors like DIR is an undeclared identifier. I've included , so why can't it recognize DIR?
Thank you.
Regards,
Rayne
Consider compiling your program with windows port of gcc (from Mingw32 or Cygwin) first. This will provide you with more familiar environment. If you'll still have to compile everything with VC++, you'll have more incremental process of porting.
Also, it is not evident from your post, but it seems you are trying to use dirent.h. Note that dirent.h (and corresponding libs) is not included with VC++.
One of the best ways to learn would be to start with the smallest application that you can compile on both. Expand this working and portable application step by step into the more fully featured application you desire.
Remember to add all .c/.cpp files to the 'Source Files' directory in the project as they won't be compiled otherwise.
Restrict any non-portable code (that you will need) to a single place. For example if you need to create threads, have a common create thread function used throughout (but implemented differently). Using portable libraries such as Boost can help here.