How to link to a specific version of the standard library (with gcc)

Question

I've installed GCC 3.4 to /opt/gcc-3.4, and I'm using it to compile legacy code which is incompatible with GCC 4. This also means old versions of the C(++) standard libraries, binutils, and utility libraries.

It works fine for some libraries, but fails when compiling libtiff, because it picks up the system libraries in /usr/lib (see output below). This might be an autotools/configure issue, but I'm not sure. I can't find a configure switch or environment variable, and I'd rather not modify my system /usr/lib/libc.so .

So how to make sure it links to the standard library in /opt/gcc-3.4.4/lib, and ignores /lib and /usr/lib completely?

Output of make (excerpt):

libtool: link: g++ -shared -nostdlib /usr/lib/crti.o /opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.3/crtbeginS.o .libs/tif_stream.o -Wl,--whole-archive ../port/.libs/libport.a -Wl,--no-whole-archive -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/home/jason/d0src34/prereq/tiff-3.9.4/libtiff/.libs -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/home/jason/d0src34/prereq/usr/lib -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib ../libtiff/.libs/libtiff.so -L/usr/lib /usr/lib/libjpeg.so -lz -L/opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.3 -L/opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.3/../../.. /opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib/libstdc++.so -L/home/jason/Downloads/gcc-3.4.3/build/i686-pc-linux-gnu/libstdc++-v3/src -L/home/jason/Downloads/gcc-3.4.3/build/i686-pc-linux-gnu/libstdc++-v3/src/.libs -L/home/jason/Downloads/gcc-3.4.3/build/gcc -lm -lc -lgcc_s /opt/gcc-3.4.3/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.3/crtendS.o /usr/lib/crtn.o -Wl,-soname -Wl,libtiffxx.so.3 -o .libs/libtiffxx.so.3.9.4

/home/jason/d0src34/prereq/usr/bin/ld:/usr/lib/libc.so: file format not recognized; treating as linker script

/home/jason/d0src34/prereq/usr/bin/ld:/usr/lib/libc.so:5: parse error

Answer 1

I've found a (hackish) answer to my own question:

I've been using binutils 2.15, because later versions have an incompatibility with GCC 3.4. In more recent versions, the format of /usr/lib/libc.so has changed, and the old binutils can't parse it.

I temporarily commented out the last line (with "GROUP"), and my code compiled:

/* GNU ld script
   Use the shared library, but some functions are only in
   the static library, so try that secondarily.  */
OUTPUT_FORMAT(elf32-i386)
/* GROUP ( /lib/libc.so.6 /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a  AS_NEEDED ( /lib/ld-linux.so.2 ) ) */

However, I'm not really satisfied, since I can hardly tell other people who want to use the code to edit their system files. Also, I'm not sure if I've linked it to the correct glibc version, since the system /usr/lib is still in the search path, so I can't tell for sure if the binaries will work on other systems.