Can I use a shared library compiled on Ubuntu on a Redhat Linux machine ?

Question

I have compiled a shared library on my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop. I want to send the shared lib to a co-developer who has a Red Hat Enterprise 5 box.

Can he use my shared lib on his machine?

Answer 1

I join to Xinus. IMHO compiler, in case of Ubuntu and RHEL, it will be gcc, is tightly coupled with glibc. So if on both machines it's same, than most probably it caa run.

But why guessing, do a small test drive (main with couple of lines) and if it's running than there's a good chance that a bigger program can run on a "hostile" environment :)

Answer 2

The best solution is to give your code to your co developper, and let's compile it !!!!

You have several solution

• Upgrading his gcc to the same version as your
• Install his gcc version on your computer and compile it

You must check if you both work on the same architecture 32 bits or 64 bits.

My opinion is that you can have some problems , because you probably do not use the same glibc .

Answer 3

First point: all of the answers regarding compiler version seem misguided. What's important are the linkages (and the architecture, of course).

If you copy the .so file over to the start system (into its own /usr/local/* or /opt/* directory, for example) then try to run the intended executable using an LD_PRELOAD environment settings. If the linker (ld-linux.so) manages to resolve all the symbols between the two then the program should load and run.

So it should be possible, and reasonably safe (so long as you're not over-writing any of the existing system libraries and just using LD_* /etc/ld.so.preload (in a chroot?) magic to link the target executables to this library.

However, I think it's a bad idea. You have a package management issue. Both Ubuntu and Red Hat have fine package management tools. Use them! (Note the proper place to ask questions about package management would be ServerFault or SuperUser, definitely not SO).

Answer 4

Unlikely: you wouldn't have asked this question if it just worked, would you?

According to DistroWatch, Ubuntu 9.10 uses glibc-2.10.1, while RHEL-5.4 uses glibc-2.5. This means that if your library references any symbols with versions GLIBC_2.6 and above, it will not work on RHEL-5.

You can tell whether you use any such symbols (and which ones) with:

readelf -s /path/to/your/library.so | egrep 'GLIBC_2.([6-9]|10)'

If the output is non-empty, then the library will not work on RHEL-5.

You might be able to build a library compatible with RHEL-5 by using autopackage.