Re: Shared VS Dynamic Libraries...

[Joshua Phillips <jp.sittingduck@...>]

On Wed 15/Dec/2010, Mike McGonagle wrote:
> OK, maybe I am misunderstanding something here... I guess I am just
> confused by all this...
> 
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 8:29 PM, Mike McGonagle <mjmogo@gmail.com> wrote:
> > After reading a bit about how to compile Lua as a library, it would
> > appear that compiling to a Shared Library has been discontinued due to
> > incompatibilities. But, I also noted that many of the library that I
> > would like to use (yeah, this is all about me...) just happen to all
> > compile to Shared Libraries... Two of these libraries include
> > 'luasocket' and 'luahpdf'.
> >
> > My question is "Is it easy to convert these projects from compiling a
> > Shared Library (.so) into ones that compile Dynamic Libraries (.a)?"
> >
> > Mike
> >
> 

The .a suffix is usually used for static libraries (archives of object
files). .a files are linked in at compile-time.

"Dynamic libraries" are libraries that can be loaded at run-time.
"Shared libraries", or "shared objects", are dynamic libraries
designed so that only one copy can be shared between running processes.