How to package C++ with dlls and libraries

Question

I'm wondering how to "package" a C++ project for release. It uses various libraries, and I don't want a user to have to go through the same setup I did, with putting the right files in the right place and such. I had difficulty researching this, because I'm not sure the technical term for this issue. If I'm using command line compiling on Linux, is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

Your approach to this will differ on Windows and Linux because each OS handles this a different way. I'm more familiar with Linux so I'll restrict my answer to just the Linux side of things.

When you link your executable with a library using -l flag the linker defaults to looking in the normal system library directories so there are four approaches here.

1. Require the user to properly install the libraries themselves. However, it sounds like you don't want to do that.

2. Have the user add the library location to LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable.

3. Your third option is force the linker to look in a certain path for the libraries using the -rpath flag. For example, to have the application look in its working directory for a shared library you can compile with: g++ -rpath ./ -l SomeLib -o MyApp myapp.cpp

4. One other option is to static link your code with their library that way you only have to distribute one executable. If a static library exists you can use g++ -static -l SomeLib -o MyApp myapp.cpp to tell gcc to link statically.