is it a common practice to have the static and dynamic versions of a library with the same name?

Question

I downloaded a library (NAG c libraries to be precise) and both the static and dynamic versions of the library have the same name (libnagc_nag). At the beginning I was having troubles because I was trying to link to the static version in OS X and by default it uses the dynamic library, so I changed the name of the files to distinguish between them (libnagc_nag_s.a and libnagc_nag_d.dylib for OS X and libnagc_nag_d.so in linux). my question is: Is giving them the same name to both a common practice? Even if so, Is there any problem or disadvantage on changing their names in this way?

Answer 1

Yes, it's the convention to have

 libNAME.a

and

 libNAME.so.VERS 

with the .a being the static archive. Why do you want to add a static library in to your program, though? You'll encounter maintenance difficulties down the track if you do so.

Adding -lnagc_nag_d to your LDFLAGS in the Makefile should be sufficient to get the dynamic library linked in.

Answer 2

Also you can provide a full library's file name to the linker (as of an object file)...