`bash: ./a.out: No such file or directory` on running executable produced by `ld`

by

ld -lc a.o

There are several things wrong with this command line:

  1. In general, user-level code should never use ld directly, and always use appropriate compiler front end (gcc here) to perform the link.

    As you have discovered, the link command line that gcc constructs is quite complicated, and the command line that you’ve accepted in Joan Esteban’s answer is wrong.

    If you want to see the actual link command, examine output from gcc -v a.o.

    Also note that link command changes significantly when you change gcc command only slightly (e.g. some OSes require different crt1.o depending on whether you are linking multi-threaded executable or not), and the command line is always OS-specific (which is one more reason to never use ld directly).

  2. Libraries should follow object files on command line. So ld -lc a.o is never correct, and should always be (a variant of) ld a.o -lc. Explanation.

More Related Contents:

  1. Linking against older symbol version in a .so file
  2. Why does the order of ‘-l’ option in gcc matter? [duplicate]
  3. Hide password input on terminal
  4. Why does malloc initialize the values to 0 in gcc?
  5. Where is the header file on Linux? Why can’t I find ? [duplicate]
  6. Where is PATH_MAX defined in Linux?
  7. Why does the C preprocessor interpret the word “linux” as the constant “1”?
  8. How to make weak linking work with GCC?
  9. Merge multiple .so shared libraries
  10. What is the advantage of GCC’s __builtin_expect in if else statements?
  11. When / How does Linux load shared libraries into address space?
  12. Compilation fails with “relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata.str1.8′ can not be used when making a shared object”
  13. gcc will not properly include math.h
  14. “undefined reference to `pow'” even with math.h and the library link -lm [duplicate]
  15. How Can I debug a C program on Linux?
  16. How to print the address of a function?
  17. How to compile my own glibc C standard library from source and use it?
  18. Why am I able to perform floating point operations inside a Linux kernel module?
  19. Disable variable-length automatic arrays in gcc
  20. How can a shared library (.so) call a function that is implemented in its loader code?
  21. How to print time difference in accuracy of milliseconds and nanoseconds from C in Linux?
  22. How can I include a needed C library using GCC?
  23. Linking a C program directly with ld fails with undefined reference to `__libc_csu_fini`
  24. calling assembly function from c
  25. How to set up a cron job to run an executable every hour?
  26. c math linker problems on Ubuntu 11.10 [duplicate]
  27. Building a shared library using gcc on Linux and MinGW on Windows
  28. How to work with external libraries when cross compiling?
  29. Returning struct containing array
  30. How does GCC behave if passed conflicting compiler flags?

Leave a Comment