FreeType library and “Undefined reference to FT_Init_FreeType”

Question

Coming from PHP, this is my first experience with C/C++ (so go easy on me). I\'m following this tutorial to write a simple script using the FreeType library. The following c

Answer 1

Those are link errors. If they include a Makefile with the demo you are better off using that. Otherwise, you need to add -L and -l options to your compile command line so the compiler (actually the linker, which gets invoked by the compiler behind the scene) knows where to find the FreeType library.

The -L option gives the path to where the code for the library exists. For example

-L/usr/local/lib  

And the -l option gives the name of the library. The library named with the -l option is specified in a shortened form, that is you leave off the "lib" in the front and the ".a" in the back. So for example, if the FreeType library was stored in file libfreetype.a , it would show in the -l option as

-lfreetype

e.g.:

gcc render.c -I/usr/include/freetype2 -L/usr/local/lib -lfreetype