usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>

I'm trying to compile my program and it returns this error :

usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>

in my makefile I use the command g++ and link to my library which is a symbolic link to my library located on an other directory.

Is there an option to add to make it work please?

To figure out what the linker is looking for, run it in verbose mode.

For example, I encountered this issue while trying to compile MySQL with ZLIB support. I was receiving an error like this during compilation:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lzlib

I did some Googl'ing and kept coming across different issues of the same kind where people would say to make sure the .so file actually exists and if it doesn't, then create a symlink to the versioned file, for example, zlib.so.1.2.8. But, when I checked, zlib.so DID exist. So, I thought, surely that couldn't be the problem.

I came across another post on the Internets that suggested to run make with LD_DEBUG=all:

LD_DEBUG=all make

Although I got a TON of debugging output, it wasn't actually helpful. It added more confusion than anything else. So, I was about to give up.

Then, I had an epiphany. I thought to actually check the help text for the ld command:

ld --help

From that, I figured out how to run ld in verbose mode (imagine that):

ld -lzlib --verbose

This is the output I got:

==================================================
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib64/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib64/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/local/lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /lib/libzlib.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/libzlib.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/libzlib.a failed
/usr/bin/ld.bfd.real: cannot find -lzlib

Ding, ding, ding...

So, to finally fix it so I could compile MySQL with my own version of ZLIB (rather than the bundled version):

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.8 /usr/lib/libzlib.so

Voila!

If your library name is say libxyz.so and it is located on path say:

/home/user/myDir

then to link it to your program:

g++ -L/home/user/myDir -lxyz myprog.cpp -o myprog

There does not seem to be any answer which addresses the very common beginner problem of failing to install the required library in the first place.

On Debianish platforms, if libfoo is missing, you can frequently install it with something like

apt-get install libfoo-dev

The -dev version of the package is required for development work, even trivial development work such as compiling source code to link to the library.

The package name will sometimes require some decorations (libfoo0-dev? foo-dev without the lib prefix? etc), or you can simply use your distro's package search to find out precisely which packages provide a particular file.

(If there is more than one, you will need to find out what their differences are. Picking the coolest or the most popular is a common shortcut, but not an acceptable procedure for any serious development work.)

For other architectures (most notably RPM) similar procedures apply, though the details will be different.

Compile Time

When g++ says cannot find -l<nameOfTheLibrary>, it means that g++ looked for the file lib{nameOfTheLibrary}.so, but it couldn't find it in the shared library search path, which by default points to /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib and somewhere else maybe.

To resolve this problem, you should either provide the library file (lib{nameOfTheLibrary}.so) in those search paths or use -L command option. -L{path} tells the g++ (actually ld) to find library files in path {path} in addition to default paths.

Example: Assuming you have a library at /home/taylor/libswift.so, and you want to link your app to this library. In this case you should supply the g++ with the following options:

g++ main.cpp -o main -L/home/taylor -lswift

• Note 1: -l option gets the library name without lib and .so at its beginning and end.

• Note 2: In some cases, the library file name is followed by its version, for instance libswift.so.1.2. In these cases, g++ also cannot find the library file. A simple workaround to fix this is creating a symbolic link to libswift.so.1.2 called libswift.so.

---

Runtime

When you link your app to a shared library, it's required that library stays available whenever you run the app. In runtime your app (actually dynamic linker) looks for its libraries in LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It's an environment variable which stores a list of paths.

Example: In case of our libswift.so example, dynamic linker cannot find libswift.so in LD_LIBRARY_PATH (which points to default search paths). To fix the problem you should append that variable with the path libswift.so is in.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/taylor

During compilation with g++ via make define LIBRARY_PATH if it may not be appropriate to change the Makefile with the -Loption. I had put my extra library in /opt/lib so I did:

$ export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib/

and then ran make for successful compilation and linking.

To run the program with a shared library define:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib/

before executing the program.

First, you need to know the naming rule of lxxx:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lltdl
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lXtst

lc means libc.so, lltdl means libltdl.so, lXtst means libXts.so.

So, it is lib + lib-name + .so

---

Once we know the name, we can use locate to find the path of this lxxx.so file.

$ locate libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so   # <-- right here
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so.2
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so.2.5.1
/home/user/anaconda3/lib/preloadable_libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so.2
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/libiconv.so.2.5.1
/home/user/anaconda3/pkgs/libiconv-1.14-0/lib/preloadable_libiconv.so

If you cannot find it, you need to install it by yum (I use CentOS). Usually you have this file, but it does not link to right place.

---

Link it to the right place, usually it is /lib64 or /usr/lib64

$ sudo ln -s /home/user/anaconda3/lib/libiconv.so /usr/lib64/

Done!

ref: https://i-pogo.blogspot.jp/2010/01/usrbinld-cannot-find-lxxx.html

When you compile your program you must supply the path to the library; in g++ use the -L option:

g++ myprogram.cc -o myprogram -lmylib -L/path/foo/bar

I had this problem with compiling LXC on a fresh VM with Centos 7.8. I tried all the above and failed. Some suggested removing the -static flag from the compiler configuration but I didn't want to change anything.

The only thing that helped was to install glibc-static and retry. Hope that helps someone.

Check the location of your library, for example lxxx.so:

locate lxxx.so

If it is not in the /usr/lib folder, type this:

sudo cp yourpath/lxxx.so /usr/lib

Done.

Apart from the answers already given, it may also be the case that the *.so file exists but is not named properly. Or it may be the case that *.so file exists but it is owned by another user / root.

Issue 1: Improper name

If you are linking the file as -l<nameOfLibrary> then library file name MUST be of the form lib<nameOfLibrary> If you only have <nameOfLibrary>.so file, rename it!

Issue 2: Wrong owner

To verify that this is not the problem - do

ls -l /path/to/.so/file

If the file is owned by root or another user, you need to do

sudo chown yourUserName:yourUserName /path/to/.so/file

Here is Ubuntu information of my laptop.

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release:	18.04
Codename:	bionic

I use locate to find the .so files for boost_filesystem and boost_system

locate libboost_filesystem
locate libboost_system

Then link .so files to /usr/lib and rename to .so

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_filesystem.so.1.65.1 /usr/lib/libboost_filesystem.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_system.so.1.65.1 /usr/lib/libboost_system.so

Done! R package velocyto.R was successfully installed!

This error may also be brought about if the symbolic link is to a dynamic library, .so, but for legacy reasons -static appears among the link flags. If so, try removing it.

The library I was trying to link to turned out to have a non-standard name (i.e. wasn't prefixed with 'lib'), so they recommended using a command like this to compile it -

gcc test.c -Iinclude lib/cspice.a -lm

I encountered the same error message.

I built the cmocka as a so and tried to link it to my executable. But ld always complains below:

> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcmocka

It turns out that there are 3 files generated after cmocka is built:

1. libcmocka.so
2. libcmocka.so.0
3. libcmocka.so.0.7.0

1 and 2 are symbol links and only 3 is the real file.

I only copied the 1 to my library folder, where ld failed to find the 3.

After I copied all 3, ld works.