Library Naming Conventions

By convention, shared objects are usually designated by the prefix lib and the suffix .so, and archives are designated by the prefix lib and the suffix .a. For example, libc.so is the shared object version of the standard C library made available to the compilation environment, and libc.a is the library's archive version.

These conventions are recognized by the -l option of the link-editor. This option is commonly used to supply additional libraries to a link-edit. The following example directs the link-editor to search for libfoo.so. If the link-editor does not find libfoo.so, it searches for libfoo.a before moving on to the next directory to be searched.

$ cc -o prog file1.c file2.c -lfoo

There is a naming convention regarding the compilation environment and the runtime environment use of shared objects. The compilation environment uses the simple .so suffix, whereas the runtime environment commonly uses the suffix with an additional version number. See Naming Conventions and Coordination of Versioned Filenames.

When link-editing in dynamic mode, you can choose to link with a mix of shared objects and archives. When link-editing in static mode, only archive libraries are acceptable for input.

When in dynamic mode and using the -l option to enable a library search, the link-editor will first search in a given directory for a shared object that matches the specified name. If no match is found, the link-editor looks for an archive library in the same directory. When in static mode and using the -l option, only archive libraries are sought.