usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l

Question

I\'m trying to compile my program and it returns this error :

usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l

in my makefile I use the c

Answer 1

First, you need to know the naming rule of lxxx:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lltdl
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lXtst

lc means libc.so, lltdl means libltdl.so, lXtst means libXts.so.

So, it is lib + lib-name + .so

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Once we know the name, we can use locate to find the path of this lxxx.so file.

$ locate libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so   # <-- right here
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so.2
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so.2.5.1
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/preloadable_libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so.2
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so.2.5.1
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/preloadable_libiconv.so

If you cannot find it, you need to install it by yum (I use CentOS). Usually you have this file, but it does not link to right place.

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Link it to the right place, usually it is /lib64 or /usr/lib64

$ sudo ln -s /home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so /usr/lib64/

Done!

ref: https://i-pogo.blogspot.jp/2010/01/usrbinld-cannot-find-lxxx.html

Answer 2

The library I was trying to link to turned out to have a non-standard name (i.e. wasn't prefixed with 'lib'), so they recommended using a command like this to compile it -

gcc test.c -Iinclude lib/cspice.a -lm