Re: [cffi-devel] support for .a libraries

On Fri, 2006-01-20 at 05:23 +0000, Alexis Gallagher wrote:

I was wondering if define-foreign-library can currently handle libraries that are in the "ar" archive format.

It is a UNIX limitation, not a Lisp one, that archives cannot be mapped as executable memory. The reasons for this have to do with "position-independent code"; for further information, search that term.

The reason .so libraries were created, in fact, was to offer a dynamically-loadable alternative to archives, which you will find are little more than balls of .o files.

I recommend that you obtain a .so version of your library. For help with this, I suggest contacting the library's maintainer(s).