glfw3 error: DSO Missing from command line

Question

I recently had to reinstall Linux Mint on my PC. I reinstalled all my libraries, such as GLFW and came across an error I have never seen before. Unfortunately my google-fu skills do not seem up to par for this error as I've not been able to find any fixes that work for me. Sidenote: these programs compiled fine on my old installation, and they also compile perfectly fine on my laptop that also runs Linux Mint 17.2.

This is the compile statement I using to compile:

g++ -std=c++11 main.cpp -o out -lGL -lGLU -lglfw3 -lX11 -lXxf86vm -lXrandr -lpthread -lXi

This is what the terminal spits out at me:

/usr/bin/ld: //usr/local/lib/libglfw3.a(glx_context.c.o): undefined reference to symbol 'dlclose@@GLIBC_2.2.5'
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command line
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

EDIT: I have reinstalled Mint twice in order to try and fix this. It turns up everytime.

Answer 1

It looks like the missing symbol is from libdl.

As an added bonus, I'm going to give you a Makefile. Remember to indent with tabs, NOT spaces, otherwise the Makefile won't work.

all: out
clean:
        rm -f out *.o
.PHONY: all clean

CXX = g++
CPPFLAGS =
CXXFLAGS = -std=c++11 -Wall -Wextra -g
LIBS = -lGL -lGLU -lglfw3 -lX11 -lXxf86vm -lXrandr -pthread -lXi -ldl
LDFLAGS =

out: main.o
        $(CXX) $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $^ $(LIBS)

However, it would be a lot easier if you used pkg-config. I don't know off the top of my head the right command (I'm not on Linux now so I can't check), but it will look like this:

packages = glfw3
CPPFLAGS := $(shell pkg-config --cflags $(packages))
LIBS := $(shell pkg-config --libs $(packages))

This way you won't have to even know that you need -ldl, because pkg-config will figure it out for you. This is the standard way of doing things.

Try running pkg-config --libs glfw3 for yourself to see the output. If it's not installed, run sudo apt-get install pkg-config.

Answer 2

I just want to simplify Dietrich Epp's answer for the less experienced programmers such as myself:

To solve this problem, link the libdl library by whatever means required by your compiler method. If using the command line (gcc): add "-ldl" to the linking commands so that the original linking command from DavidBittner above becomes:

g++ -std=c++11 main.cpp -o out -lGL -lGLU -lglfw3 -lX11 -lXxf86vm -lXrandr -lpthread -lXi -ldl

Note the "-ldl" added to the end.

If you are using Cmake, add "dl" to the list of additional libs.