Cannot run a program by clicking on it while I can from Terminal

Question

I'm trying to learn how to build and use dynamic library in a c++ program. Everything is fine and my program run well when I launch it from Terminal (I'm on a mac OS X El Capitan). Surprisingly that's not the case when I try to launch it by clicking on the executable. I get a dyld: Library not loaded: liblibrary.so, Reason: image not found error.

All my files are in a same repertory. I build them with commands :

g++ -c -fPIC A.cpp
g++ -c -fPIC B.cpp
g++ -shared -fPIC A.o B.o -o library.so
g++ main.cpp library.so -o Program

Thank's in advance for your help.

I tried the following solutions :

• Add a PATH, both in LD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
• Change the library extention : library.so or library.dylib
• Add an rpath g++ main.cpp library.so -Wl,-rpath,. -o Program and g++ main.cpp library.so -Wl,-rpath,$HOME/my_dir -o Program

Answer 1

Finally, I found the solution. Actually, dynamic library creation is different for macOS. What I tried since the beginning is only working for Linux.

So the Mac solution is:

g++ -dynamiclib -install_name "absolute_path/library.dylib" A.o B.o -o library.dylib

where:

• -dynamiclib is the Mac equivalent for -shared.
• -install_name "absolute_path/library.dylib" create an alias of library.dylib for the linker which is necessary to use library.dylib.

After that, the traditional command:

g++ main.cpp library.dylib -o Program

creates the executable if main.cpp and library.dylib are in the same directory.

The program can then be used everywhere in the system as long as library.dylib stays in the same place.

Following the comment of @Ssswift, relative path linking can be achieved with the command:

g++ -dynamiclib -install_name "@executable_path/library.dylib" A.o B.o -o library.dylib

The library can then follow the executable.

Thanks for your help.