I tried to create a rust library that is callable by a c program, so far i managed to create a dynamic library and call it (library created using rustc --crate-type=cdylib src/lib.rs -o libCustomlib.so
, linked using gcc main.o -lCustomlib
).
When i now take the same code but compile it as a static library (rustc --crate-type=staticlib src/lib.rs -o libCustomlib.a
) gcc throws errors when linking (using gcc main.o -L. -l:libCustomlib.a
)
the errors are all undefined references to various functions
first few lines:
/usr/bin/ld: ./libCustomlib.a(std-b1b61f01951b016b.std.5rqysbiy-cgu.2.rcgu.o): in function `std::sys::unix::mutex::Mutex::init':
/usr/src/rustc-1.43.0//src/libstd/sys/unix/mutex.rs:46: undefined reference to `pthread_mutexattr_init'
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/src/rustc-1.43.0//src/libstd/sys/unix/mutex.rs:48: undefined reference to `pthread_mutexattr_settype'
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/src/rustc-1.43.0//src/libstd/sys/unix/mutex.rs:52: undefined reference to `pthread_mutexattr_destroy'
full error is over 100 lines long but the lines are all of this form
the lib.rs currently only has one test helloWorld function:
#[no_mangle]
pub extern "C" fn fn_test() {
println!("Hello, world!");
}
with the header file included in the caller part being:
extern void fn_test();
The question is, is my error at creating the static library or at linking it? Or lies the problem somewhere else and it should not work with static libraries? Should i just use the dynamic approach (which i would like to avoid since static ones feel more like using multiple languages in one exe since you don't have to distribute the library)?
(disclaimer: for everyone asking why i would do something like that without a good reason: it's a fun project, the entire program should be as overcomplicated as possible and that's the reason why i want to use different languages)
Rust has supported producing statically linked binaries since RFC #1721 which proposed the target-feature=+crt-static flag to statically link the platform C library into the final binary.
Static libraries are either merged with other static libraries and object files during building/linking to form a single executable or loaded at run-time into the address space of their corresponding executable at a static memory offset determined at compile-time/link-time.
To be extra clear about this, Rust does support dynamic linking; it's just limited to interfacing via the stable C ABI.
On Linux, std
dynamically links to pthreads and libdl. You need to link these in as well to create the executable:
gcc main.o libCustomlib.a -lpthread -ldl
The result is a binary that links dynamically to a handful of fundamental libraries, but statically to Customlib.
If you want a purely statically linked binary, you will probably need to use no_std
and enable only the specific features of core
that do not depend on dynamically linked system libraries. (Certain libraries cannot be statically linked on Linux; read Statically linking system libraries, libc, pthreads, to aid in debugging) Just for a toy program like hello, world
you may get away with simply passing -static
to gcc, but for anything robust it's better to dynamically link these fundamental libraries.
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