How to get the system library path on Unix (Linux, FreeBSD)

Question

I need a more-or-less portable programmatic way for querying the dynamic library path list. For Linux, I can concatenate the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH and the contents of /etc/ld.so.conf (processing the include directives as needed and possibly filtering by architecture), but that doesn't work e.g. on FreeBSD.

Ultimately, I need a Python function for doing that. It can call gcc or other external commands if needed.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 18 '12 at 06:16

6

For both Linux and FreeBSD you can try working through the output of ldconfig(8). The options for listing the libraries are different though (-p on Linux, -r on FreeBSD.) Hope this helps.

Edit:

Solaris is different - see man crle.
Mac OSX is different yet again - see man dyld.

edited Aug 18 '12 at 06:16

alanc

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answered Feb 09 '10 at 16:13

Nikolai Fetissov

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Do you have anything for other Unix systems, like the Mac OS X or Solaris? – pts Feb 09 '10 at 16:19
I believe OSX should be pretty close to FreeBSD, while Solaris should be similar to Linux. Hmmm ... not exactly - updating the post. – Nikolai Fetissov Feb 09 '10 at 16:32

How to get the system library path on Unix (Linux, FreeBSD)

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