How to add directories to ld search path for a cross-compilation to ARM?

Question

I am trying to configure util-linux to cross compile using arm-none-linux-gnueabi from CodeSourcery. My only problem so far is that it can't find my ncurses library which I compiled.

How can I add a directory to the ld search path? I've tried adding to my LIBRARY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables, but neither does anything. I know that I can add the -L flag to gcc and it will add to the linker path, but is there any way to do this globally, so that I can do it once, and not have to worry about it again?

Here is the output of arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc -print-search-dirs | grep libraries | sed 's/:/\n/g':

libraries
 =/tools/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/
/tools/bin/../lib/gcc/
/tools/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/../../../../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/lib/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/
/tools/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/../../../../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/lib/
/tools/bin/../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc/lib/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/
/tools/bin/../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc/lib/
/tools/bin/../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc/usr/lib/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/
/tools/bin/../arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc/usr/lib/

I would like to add /arm/usr/lib and /arm/usr/local/lib to my ld search path.

If you need output from any other commands, just ask!

EDIT: I just found out about the CFLAGS environment variable--do all configure scripts/makefiles honor it?

Thank you!

Answer 1

If the ncurses library you compiled are going to be linked to the ARM binary you are cross-compiling you can not use LD_LIBRARY_PATH! LD_LIBRARY_PATH is only used by the current run-time and is in no way used by the compiler or linker when building your application.

The use of CFLAGS depends on creator of Makefile. CFLAGS are not automatically used even if they are defined as an environment variable. Only tools like the autoconf tools can pick them up from the environment and use them automagically. In the Makefiles find something like:

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) ....

if this fragment exists then the Makefile uses the CFLAGS variable. LDFLAGS is the more appropriate environment variable to use for link-time options.