C Program Compilation issue involving Glib2 library?

Question

I'm trying to compile the following project on a remote server.

I've git cloned the project on a folder called 'scode'.

The project requires glib2 and gsl libraries. Since I'm trying to compile on a remote server, I do not have sudo privileges. So I can't use a tool to install glib2 and gsl for me.

As a result, I've manually compiled both gsl and gslib2 under the folders 'scode/gsl' and 'scode/glib'.

I've had to modify the Makefile and add absolute paths to these directories as -I options.

Nonetheless, when I try to compile the final executable. I get the following error:

[dyuret@psglogin scode]$ make

gcc -O3 -D_GNU_SOURCE -Wall -std=c99 -I. -I /home-2/dyuret/scode/gsl -I /home-2/dyuret/scode/glib/ pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0 scode.o svec.o pkg-config --libs glib-2.0 -lm -lgsl -lgslcblas -o scode

//home-2/dyuret/scode/glib/glib/libglib-2.0.la: file not recognized: File format not recognized

collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make: * [scode] Error 1

I've researched the issue a bit. This link looks informative but I can't quite decipher what the author is saying, as I'm not that experienced with compilers, libtools and the compilation flow in general.

Any help would be much appreciated. I've already spent some time on this issue and I haven't been able to make much progress.

Answer 1

Someone at my group helped me with the problem. Here're the steps he roughly carried out:

(1) Manually installed glib and additional libraries at $HOME directory - i.e. $HOME/lib, $HOME/include.

(1.1) I think he did this by './configure prefix=$HOME', 'make', 'make install'.

(2) Got rid of `pkg_config` usage, which was causing the problem I outlined originally. Here are his new CLFAGS and LIBS variables:

CFLAGS=-O3 -D_GNU_SOURCE -Wall -std=c99 -I. -I$$HOME/include -I$$HOME/include/glib-2.0 -I$$HOME/lib/glib-2.0/include
LIBS=-lglib-2.0 -lm -lgsl -lgslcblas -L$$HOME/lib -L/usr/local/cuda/lib64 -lcudart

After this, the code compiled without additional problems.

Answer 2

It sounds as if what you did in order to compile the libraries in non-default (i.e. non-system) locations was maybe wrong.

For packages using autoconf (i.e. that have a configure script in the source root) you're supposed to use the --prefix option to ./configure to set the target location where you want the package installed.

With packages building shared libraries, it's often essential to do the make install step, which it sounds as if you maybe didn't do.

Sorry for being vague, these things are a bit complicated.