Shared Library Path as Executable Directory

c++, gcc, linker, linux, shared-libraries

Solution

You need $ORIGIN in your RPATH, via an appropriate option to ld or other Darwin tool. See this and this.

Remember that the $ has to really end up in the path, so you need to quote or escape it in the link command line.

Update: You can see what the linker actually put into your executable with

readelf -d /path/to/exe | grep RPATH

Here is what the output should look like:

 0x0000000f (RPATH)              Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

Problem

I have an application that is broken into several libraries for purposes of code reuse. On Windows all I have to do is put the .dll files in the same path as the executable and it automatically finds them. On Linux (since it hardcodes the paths to things) I have to specify the environmental variable `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` or preload the libraries before the executable. I've seen some things about embedding the path using the linker option of `-Wl,-rpath=<PATH>` and I've tried it using `.` as the path. But that just looks in the current working directory, not the executable's directory. Is there a way to specify in the linker to look in the directory of the executable for the shared libraries by default (like on Windows)? Thanks! Matt

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