Position of an Archive on the Command Line

The position of an archive on the command line can affect the output file being produced. The link-editor searches an archive only to resolve undefined or tentative external references that have previously been encountered. After this search is completed and any required members have been extracted, the link-editor moves onto the next input file on the command line.

Therefore by default, the archive is not available to resolve any new references from the input files that follow the archive on the command line. For example, the following command directs the link-editor to search libfoo.a only to resolve symbol references that have been obtained from file1.c. The libfoo.a archive is not available to resolve symbol references from file2.c or file3.c.

$ cc -o prog file1.c -Bstatic -lfoo file2.c file3.c -Bdynamic

Interdependencies between archives can exist, such that the extraction of members from one archive must be resolved by extracting members from another archive. If these dependencies are cyclic, the archives must be specified repeatedly on the command line to satisfy previous references.

$ cc -o prog .... -lA -lB -lC -lA -lB -lC -lA

The determination, and maintenance, of repeated archive specifications can be tedious. The -z rescan option makes this process simpler. Following all input file processing, this option causes the entire archive list to be reprocessed. This processing attempts to locate additional archive members that resolve symbol references. This archive rescanning continues until a pass over the archive list occurs in which no new members are extracted. The previous example can be simplified as follows.

$ cc -o prog -z rescan .... -lA -lB -lC

You should specify any archives at the end of the command line unless multiple-definition conflicts require you to do otherwise.