Recompiling and Relinking
- In genaral,linking is a faster than compliation----in a large project with many source files,recompiling only those that have been modified can make a significant saving.
- The process of recompiling only the modified files in a project cna be antomated using GNU Make
Linking With External Libraries
- A library is a collection of precompiled object files which can be linked into programs.The most common use of libraries is to provide system function,such as the square root function sqrt found in the C math library.
- Libraries are typically stored in special archive files with the extension '.a',referred to as static libraries.They are created from object files with a separate tool,the GNU archiver ar,and used by the linker to resolve refernces to functions at compile-time.
- The standard system libraries are usually found in the directories '/usr/lib' and '/lib'.