On May 4, 2011, at 7:57 PM, Weddington, Eric wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Chris Marrin [mailto:ch...@marrin.com] >> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2011 7:21 PM >> To: Weddington, Eric >> Cc: avr-libc-dev@nongnu.org >> Subject: Re: [avr-libc-dev] avr-gcc, libgcc.a and libgcov.a >> >> >> Yes, it is very helpful. One other question is what is the purpose of >> libiberty.a? It's in the path lib/ which seems very odd if it's an AVR >> specific library. Is it just there to allow building the tools? Can I >> ignore it? > > Libiberty is a library that comes with GCC (though it can be it's own > separate library) that has common functionality across multiple platforms, > including various Linux flavors and Windows. It's known as a "compatability" > library. It's mainly used in building GCC itself for whatever host is > specified. > > The reason for the weird name has to do with library names and what GCC > searches for. GCC uses the -l switch to specify the name of the library to > link in. However the library name must be in the form of "lib<name>.a". So, > for example, on the linking command line you will see "-lc" given to GCC. > This means that GCC will search for the filename "libc.a", which happens to > usually be the Standard C library for the target compiled for. Well since the > filename of the library is "libiberty.a", this means that the linker switch > to find the file must be: -liberty, i.e. 'freedom' from the host system's > idiosyncrasies. Get it? ;-)
Yes, programmers in the early days sure were "funny" :-) I have found that it's actually binutils that installs it. Since it is an i386 library I won't worry about adding it to the install. Thanks ----- ~Chris ch...@marrin.com _______________________________________________ AVR-libc-dev mailing list AVR-libc-dev@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/avr-libc-dev
