static library install under Linux - should it be similar to dynamic library install?

Question

I've spend the morning figuring out how in a makefile to do a shared library install under Linux.

So that's fine; I now have my shared object and a pair of soft links to it, one of which was created by ldconfig and one by me.

Now, I can also build my library as a static library.

When I check /usr/lib, I see the .a files there just being...there. No symbolic links, no arrangement of version and release numbering in filenames.

Should I be arranging my static libraries with symbolic links the same way I arrange my shared objects, or is it in fact customary just to place a static library, unadorned, into /usr/local/lib?

Answer 1

Unlike shared libraries, the static libraries placed into /lib do not participate in dynamic linking dependencies resolution. They're only used when you build your app. Therefore, there's no need to insert symbolic links and precise release numbers into their filenames.

When you link your application with a static library, the linker just embeds the code of the one it found in /lib folder. If, on the other system, the static library with same name will differ, your application even won't know about that. Because it contains the code of the static library it was compiled with and doesn't need to look up it in the system it runs on.

So, the installation of static libraries should differ from that of shared ones: no fine-grained versioning in /lib directory is actually required.