Issue
This should not be a difficult task. The tried pages are following:
- How can I include a needed C library using GCC?
- How can I add a default include path for GCC in Linux?
- Environment Variables Affecting GCC
- How does GCC automatically know to include the glib library?
- How can I compile GCC with a shared library?
- Shared libraries with GCC on Linux
How can I add the include and library path for the cfitsio library for the GCC compiler?
Attempt
I downloaded and installed cfitsio in the path ~/Applications. (not /Applications, BTW).
Then installation commands are:
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
Now, let's say I have a program, example.c.
Compile: gcc -Wall -O3 example.c -lm -lcfitsio
It does not work.
However,
gcc -Wall -O3 -o example example.c -I /Users/poudel/Applications/cfitsio/include -L /Users/poudel/Applications/cfitsio/lib -lm -lcfitsio
Works
Now I don't want to use flags -I and -L all the time. How can I do so?
I updated my ~/.bash_profile with the following lines:
export PATH=$PATH:~/Applications/cfitsio/bin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio/lib/pkgconfig:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio/zlib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
To check the paths included after running source ~/.bash_profile, I used:
echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
This shows the added paths correctly.
I have added the paths, but this does not work:
gcc -Wall -O3 -o example example.c -lm -lcfitsio
And if I give the -I and -L flags with their paths, it works.
Can we do something that the above command work without using -I and -L commands all the time?
Note:
- I even tried installing the cfitsio from the /usr/local directory.
- I installed from /usr/local/cfitsio, but again I had to use -I and -L command with these new locations.
I tried to use DYLD instead and added these lines in bash_profile:
export PATH="$(pwd):~/Applications/cfitsio/bin:$PATH"
export PATH="$(pwd):~/Applications/cfitsio/include:$PATH" # fitsio.h is here
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="~/Applications/cfitsio/zlib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"
However, if I run these commands, they return empty outputs, I could not set the dyld library path to these paths.
echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
echo $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
Solution
Following the suggestions of Jonathan Leffler, I got a workaround.
I created soft links, and it worked.
sudo ln -s ~/Applications/cfitsio/lib/libcfitsio.a /usr/local/lib/libcfitsio.a
sudo ln -s ~/Applications/cfitsio/include/*.h /usr/local/include/
In fact, I copied all the header files from
~/Applications/cfitsio/include
to
/usr/local/include/
and it worked.
I assume soft links also should work.
Answered By - BhishanPoudel Answer Checked By - Candace Johnson (WPSolving Volunteer)