Best practices for linking - part 2

Part 2 of the article on library linking best practices is up on OTN. This is a relatively short read about ensuring that the library records its dependencies.

The relevant options are:

• -z defs which will cause the linker to report any unresolved symbols found in the library. This is the default for applications, but is not the default for libraries. Using this flag requires that all the libraries that are required for successful linking are listed on the link line. Doing this will ensure that the library will fail to link rather than fail at runtime.
• The command ldd -U -r lib.so will report if the library (or executable) is linked to libraries that it does not use. This is helpful in ensuring that the minimal number of libraries are loaded in order for an application to run.