gcc cannot find -lglfw3

Question

I'm on a linux system (arch linux specifically) and I'm trying to compile the introduction project from the official glfw page but I cannot seem to get gcc to compile it. If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about it's this.

Also this is how I'm trying to compile it:

gcc -Iinclude test.c -o test -lglfw3 -lm -lGL -lGLU

and it gives me the following errors:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lglfw3

collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Tolliver

Answer 1

I completely forgot about this question until I got a notification for it. For me the solution was to not use -lglfw3 but rather use -lglfw

Tolliver

This fixed my problem too, after 2 hours of struggle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Anyone has any idea why this happens? -lglfw vs -lglfw3 ?? – Apomixis

@MihaiAlexandruManolescu that's just the way the library was packaged. The actual file name is libglfw.so so adding a 3 obviously messes up the search. If you're asking why it's packaged that way then that would be a little harder to tell, you'd have to ask the person packaging it. Probably because they want whatever program linked with glfw to always use the latest version of the library and that can be achieved by just naming it glfw rather than adding on the version number – Tolliver

Answer 2

If you've installed pkg-config, and glfw3.pc is in the search path, try:

gcc -Iinclude test.c -o test `pkg-config --libs glfw3` -lm -lGL -lGLU

If you only have the static build, use: pkg-config --static --libs glfw3, which will add the dependencies that libglfw3.a requires.

Wagonage

Answer 3

Find libglfw3.a or libglfw3.so on your system Mention that path to gcc using -L

gcc -Iinclude test.c -o test -L/dir/where/glfw3/resides -lglfw3 -lm -lGL -lGLU

Mamba