Re^4: Error during compilation of 5.8.8 on solaris 10

Your advice is correct in some respects, but incorrect in others.

libdb.so is a shared library, whereas libdb.a is a static library. If you have both libdb.so and libdb.a available in the search paths used by a C compiler (gcc in this case), then the shared library is preferred. Shared libraries are preferred because they prevent the code from begin compiled into your resulting Perl binary, which increases binary size and requires more resources every time it is invoked. The previous comments about needing libdb.a instead of libdb.so were incorrect.
Having the library is not sufficient; you need the development headers as well. This was a correct stateement.

If you or someone you know has root access to the system, you can start at this page for the version of Solaris you have (as opposed to using the SunFreeware one):

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/index.xml

You can get the Berkeley DB companion software for Solaris 8, 9, 10 and on Sparc and Intel platforms. Sun requires a free login to access the downloads (both DVD ISO image and individual package downloads).

Comment on Re^4: Error during compilation of 5.8.8 on solaris 10

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Re^5: Error during compilation of 5.8.8 on solaris 10 by oko1 (Deacon) on Apr 10, 2008 at 16:46 UTC
> The previous comments about needing libdb.a instead of libdb.so were incorrect. The documentation says you're wrong; the '-l' option explicitly requires the '.a' version. -- Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- HG Wells	[reply]
Re^6: Error during compilation of 5.8.8 on solaris 10 by Sinistral (Monsignor) on Apr 10, 2008 at 19:08 UTC
Your documentation link went to the original parent node. A little searching shows this: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.0/gcc/Link-Options.html#Link-Options being what you're citing. I see what you're saying, but notice this option: -static On systems that support dynamic linking, this prevents linking with the shared libraries. On other systems, this option has no effect. Personal experience with GCC (including and especially on Solaris) indicates that if you have libname.so and libname.a, then the .so is preferred when building. If you only linked against libname.a, then you wouldn't need the -static command line flag.	[reply]
Re^6: Error during compilation of 5.8.8 on solaris 10 by Anonymous Monk on Apr 10, 2008 at 19:26 UTC
From the linker's (GNU `ld`) man page (remember, link options are just being passed through to the linker): -larchive --library=archive Add archive file archive to the list of files to link. This option may be used any number of times. ld will search its path-list for occurrences of "libarchive.a" for every archive specified. On systems which support shared libraries, ld may also search for libraries with extensions other than ".a". Specifically, on ELF and SunOS systems, ld will search a directory for a library with an extension of ".so" before searching for one with an extension of ".a". By convention, a ".so" extension indicates a shared library.	[reply] [d/l]