Linking for maximum portability

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Hello -

I'm trying to build an executable that would be distributed in binary
form, but needs to link to a MySQL DB -

problem I'm finding is that the shared libs range in name
libmysqlclient.so.15 , libmysqlclient.so.14, etc... And throw a
run-time error when it isn't found...

Is there a way to compile to just the .so, without the extension that
would be more portable?

Or is there a better approach to this? or do I just need to maintain a
copy that is linked to each different version ?

Thanks

Matt


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Re: Linking for maximum portability

In the last episode (May 23), Matthew Kettlewell said:
> I'm trying to build an executable that would be distributed in binary
> form, but needs to link to a MySQL DB -
>
> problem I'm finding is that the shared libs range in name
> libmysqlclient.so.15 , libmysqlclient.so.14, etc... And throw a
> run-time error when it isn't found...
>
> Is there a way to compile to just the .so, without the extension that
> would be more portable?

No, the libraries have different numbers because the ABI has changed, due to
functions being removed or structure elements changing. You can't reliably
compile against one version and expect any other version to work.

> Or is there a better approach to this? or do I just need to maintain a
> copy that is linked to each different version ?

If the platform you are compiling for has bundled a version of mysql, link
against that to ensure that your application will run on any system.
Solaris 10, for example, includes a libmysqlclient.so.12 (corresponding to
mysql 4.0) in its SUNWmysqlu package, so you know that all Solaris 10
systems have it or can easily install it.

Otherwise, link against the latest stable version there is an OS-supplied
package for. Most packaging systems for Linux and *BSD will separate
libraries into non-conflicting packages, so an end-user can have multiple
library versions installed at once.

Another option is to statically link your application so that there are no
shared-library dependencies at all.

--
Dan Nelson
dnelson@allantgroup.com

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