Re: Shared library versions

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au>]

Mark Ferlatte wrote:
> Russell Shaw said on Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 03:42:43PM +1000:
>
> > Hi,
> > How do programs determine what version of a shared (.so) library
> > they get when run?
>
>
> They use whatever version they are linked against.  Sometimes they are linked
> against libfoo.so, which is a symlink to the current default, other times they
> are linked against libfoo.so.1.2.3.4, so they will require that specific
> version to be present.
>
> The dynamic linker worries about all of this for you, on startup.  You can use
> the ldd command to determine which libs a given executable wants (ie, ldd
> /bin/ls).

I'm tracking down a bug in xgettext (from gettext 0.12.1):

debconf2po-update

  xgettext: error while loading shared libraries:
                libgettextsrc-0.11.5.so: cannot open
                shared object file: No such file or directory

gettext installs:

  /usr/lib/libgettextsrc.so

which is a symlink to: libgettextsrc-0.12.1.so

So, xgettext should look for the libgettextsrc.so symlink.

If a program calls a shared library via a symlink, how does
it tell the linker what version to get?