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Is it possible to convert or maybe extract a file from .la library to .a?

I've a project where I have my application linked statically against all libraries, but some of them are generated with libtool (.la libs), while others are created with gcc (.a lib). In this answer one says, that in the .libs subdirectory should be .a libfile, but I've found there only .la, .so, and .o files, probably because the lib project was not configured with --enable-static.

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Grzegorz Głowacki
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1 Answers1

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that in the .libs subdirectory should be .a libfile, but I've found there only .la, .so, and .o files, probably because the lib project was not configured with --enable-static.

That's what it sounds like to me as well. You'll need to do that to get a .a file. The libs you are building with libtool are probably being compiled with gcc.

Is it possible to convert or maybe extract a file from .la library to .a?

No. There's no object code in a .la file to extract to a .a file. As the link to the other answer says, it's basically a metadata file of how to link and where the files are, etc. A .la file is humanly readable, so if you really want to know what's going in there you can examine it.

ldav1s
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  • If libtool is only a metadata file, and it can link without having .a library it means, that it has to link with all .o files, hasn't it? – Grzegorz Głowacki Sep 26 '16 at 07:06
  • For static libs, a `.a` file just contains `.o` files (e.g. [merging](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3821949/425738) two `.a` files, showing the extraction steps and a creation step). There's no linking going on in the creation of `.a` libs, just archiving, as that example shows. Linking happens later when the executable is built. – ldav1s Sep 26 '16 at 12:48