| 1 | <chapter id="general-genlib">
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| 2 | <?dbhtml filename="genlib.html" dir="general"?>
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| 3 | <title>General Libraries</title>
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| 4 |
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| 5 | <para>Libraries contain code which is often required by more than
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| 6 | one program. This has the advantage that each program doesn't need to
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| 7 | duplicate code (and risk introducing bugs), it just has to call
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| 8 | functions from the libraries installed on the system. The most obvious
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| 9 | example of a set of libraries is glibc which is installed during the LFS
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| 10 | book. This contains all of the C library functions which programs
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| 11 | use.</para>
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| 12 |
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| 13 | <para>There are two types of library, static and shared. Shared
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| 14 | libraries (usually libXXX.so) are loaded into memory from the shared
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| 15 | copy at runtime (hence the name). Static libraries (libXXX.a) are
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| 16 | actually linked into the program executable file itself, thus making the
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| 17 | program file larger. Quite often, you will find both static and shared
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| 18 | copies of the same library on your system.</para>
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| 19 |
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| 20 | <para>Generally, you only need to install libraries when you are
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| 21 | installing software which requires functionality which they supply. In
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| 22 | the BLFS book, each package is listed with a list of (known)
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| 23 | dependencies. Thus, you can figure out which libraries you need to have
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| 24 | before installing that program. If you are installing something without
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| 25 | using BLFS instructions, usually the <filename>README</filename> or
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| 26 | <filename>INSTALL</filename> file will contain details of the programs
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| 27 | requirements.</para>
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| 28 |
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| 29 | <para>There are certain libraries which nearly
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| 30 | <emphasis>everyone</emphasis> will need at some point. In this chapter
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| 31 | we list these and some others and explain why you may want to install
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| 32 | them.</para>
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| 33 |
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| 34 | &zlib;
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| 35 | &openssl;
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| 36 | &pcre;
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| 37 | &popt;
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| 38 | &slang;
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| 39 | &libfam;
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| 40 | &libxml;
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| 41 | &libxml2;
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| 42 | &libxslt;
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| 43 |
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| 44 | </chapter>
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