In this simple repository multiple static C++ libraries are combined into one big static library file. In this way we can create static libraries which internally use a lot of libraries themselves. The end user won't have to be bothered by a gigantic amount of library files, but can instead just link one! This also hides some unnecessary information from the end-user
When working with 3rd party C++ libraries, it can get very annoying to work with lots of library files and include directories. In order to reduce this management overhead I investigate a simple method for combining multiple static libraries into one. The end user then only needs to add the include files from one library.
To summarize the major benefits:
- No more complex linking for 3rd party libraries
- 3rd party libraries used can be obfiscated from the exposed headers for security/privacy reasons.
Source: stackoverflow
Using the GCC ar tool we can obtain all object files from an existing archive, and rebundle all these extracted object files back into a single archive.
This repository aims to show an as simple as possible example to make this work and to help anyone else understand how this process works.
There are 3 main folders:
add- This is the '3rd-party' library, it simply contains a function for adding two integers (int add(int,int)). The end-user doesn't need to know about this function.addTwice- This is the final library which consumes 'add'. It exposes an addTwice functions which adds an integer to another integer twice. (int addTwice(int,int))main- This is our product code where we useint addTwice(int, int). Here we only have to link 'addTwice' once addTwice is build.
For ease of use the Makefiles inside each folder are structured in such a way that calling make from inside 'main' will also create all libraries. To understand more about the steps required in this process investigate the source files and the Makefiles in these 3 folders.
cd ./main && make