How can I dump symbols in .la file on Ubuntu Linux?

Question

How can I dump symbols in .la file on Ubuntu Linux?

I get this linking error:

main.c:(.text+0xbfb): undefined reference to `Browser_new'

And I think my main.c is linking against libwebkit-1.0.la. So how can I find out if libwebkit-1.0.la has the symbol 'Browser_new'?

  CXXLD  libwebkit-1.0.la
  CCLD   Programs/GtkLauncher

Answer 1

The problem could well be that you are using C and libwebkit has C++ symbols. The C++ symbol names will be mangled compared to what you may see in the include files.

Anyway, to answer the question: .la is a libtool library. Usually it points to a .so file:

$ grep dlname libwebkit-1.0.la
dlname='libwebkit-1.0.so'

And then on the .so file you can use nm to show dynamic symbols:

$ nm -D libwebkit-1.0.so
...

If this is a C++ library, then you can use the -C flag to demangle the C++ function names.

$ nm -D -C libwebkit-1.0.so