How to specify non-default shared-library path in GCC Linux? Getting “error while loading shared libraries” when running

Question

There is a laptop on which I have no root privilege.

onto the machine I have a library installed using configure --prefix=$HOME/.usr .

after that,

Answer 1

There are two ways to achieve that:

• Use -rpath linker option:

gcc XXX.c -o xxx.out -L$HOME/.usr/lib -lXX -Wl,-rpath=/home/user/.usr/lib

• Use LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable - put this line in your ~/.bashrc file:

  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/user/.usr/lib

This will work even for a pre-generated binaries, so you can for example download some packages from the debian.org, unpack the binaries and shared libraries into your home directory, and launch them without recompiling.

For a quick test, you can also do (in bash at least):

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/user/.usr/lib ./xxx.out

which has the advantage of not changing your library path for everything else.

Answer 2

Should it be LIBRARY_PATH instead of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. gcc checks for LIBRARY_PATH which can be seen with -v option