Hi, --- Sam Varshavchik <mrsam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Globe Trotter writes: > > > dear list, > > > > i was looking into the qhull-devel package on extras, and I get a file > > which is in /usr/lib/libqhull.la. I have never seen a .la file before and > > so was wondering what this is, and how i should link to the library when > > calling. Any help? > > .la are "stubs" generated by libtool, which is a shared library building > tool. If you look at them, they're actually short text files that can be > interpreted as either a short shell script fragment, or programmatically > parsed. Explaining what they are used for would be rather long and > complicated. But, the basic rules are: > > 1) If you are a developer, and you know all about libtool, then you know > what they're for, end of story. > > 2) If you are a developer, and you don't know anything about libtool, and > you want to link against this library: well, first of all you should educate > yourself about libtoo, it's good for you, but in the meantime just pretend > that it does not exist, and link against the corresponding .so file. Thanks very much! I guess I am not confident enough to call myself a developer, I am just writing a C program and I would like to use the library. So, there are also two .so files? /usr/lib/libqhull.so.5 /usr/lib/libqhull.so.5.0.0 I was wondering: how do I link a .so file? I know how to handle .a files (for instance, I can call libm.a using -lm and -L for the library path). But I don't know what to do with a .so file. I also don't know how to find the difference between the two .so files above. Any suggestions? Many thanks and best wishes, Trotter ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news
