Creating a dynamic library - example

We all use library functions in the programs we write. An example of library that is always used in Solaris and Unix like Operating systems is libc.so. But how to create a library? It is not hard. A dynamic library can be easily created as shown in the following example.

Let's say we want to create a library called libgeek.so. It will contain an example function called my_library_func() that we will use in our program. We will create a simple program called geek.c that has the function we wanted. We will compile this as a library and call it libgeek.so (library names begin with lib) :

$ cat geek.c

my_library_func()
{
printf("Inside my library function");
}

The above is a library function we wanted to create. We then compile it into a dynamic library by giving a -G option to compiler :

$ cc -o libgeek.so -G geek.c

Now, we can use the generated library libgeek.so in our programs like:

$ cat hellolibrary.c

int main()
{
my_library_func();
return 0;
}

Now, we can compile our program and tell the linker to link to the library we created for my_library_func() :

$ cc hellolibrary.c -L/home/osgeek -R/home/osgeek -lgeek

L and R tell linker the path to look up during link-time and run-time to find library libgeek.so. The library libgeek.so is used with "lib" part removed and "l" prefixed as "lgeek".

When we run this program, the output would look like:

$ a.out
Inside my library function

That's it. We created a library and used it in a program.