Cross-compiling ltrace for arm-linux

Question

After a bunch of patches I was able to run the Makefile and it now crashes at the final step :(. Here is the error I get:

arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc main.o libltrace.a -lelf -o ltrace
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc/bin/ld: cannot find -lelf
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [ltrace] Error 1

I want to run ltrace on Android. Will appreciate any input.

Well the linker can't find libelf, so first make sure you actually have libelf on your system, i.e. run 'locate libelf.so' which should find the library. Post the output from that command. If it's in a non-default location, you may need to use the full path to the lib when linking. — Matt, Apr 28 '11 at 19:11
@Matt: libelf.so is located in /usr/lib. How do I include the path during linking? — Bruce, Apr 29 '11 at 18:56
That's the default location (for 32-bit systems) I believe, so you shouldn't need to include the path. Are you sure it's not libelf.so.1? What does your makefile look like and how are you calling make? Specifically try setting CPPFLAGS to -I/usr/include/libelf to include the libelf header. — Matt, Apr 29 '11 at 19:39
@Matt: I double checked and it is libelf.so.1. Sorry about that. I don't have a folder libelf in /usr/include. You can get the makefile from here http://packages.debian.org/sid/ltrace — Bruce, Apr 30 '11 at 11:24

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '11 at 22:41

you can't use the libelf library on your own system. you are trying to cross-compile after all. your computer is probably x86 based, the phone is arm. Even if you can convince the compiler to link the final executable, you x86 code will not run on arm.

You have two options:

1) compile libelf too with the cross compiler

2) try grabbing the arm version of libelf from the Debian archive, extract it using dpkg -x to a private directory, and try to link against that.

you can use specify the library name via a full path instead of -l.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

1

Try: apt-get install libelf-dev and see ld cannot find an existing library

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Community

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answered Apr 30 '11 at 02:22

Ed Burnette

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@Matt@Ed: Locate does not show libelf.so.1 but a link libelf.so with target as libelf.so.1 exists in /usr/lib – Bruce Apr 30 '11 at 11:42
Then apt-get install libelf. Some distros call it elfutils or elfutils-libelf. – Ed Burnette May 01 '11 at 18:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

Consider Scratchbox. I personally hate cross compiling, especially because I am a huge Python fan, and it is hard to cross compile Python, because it wants to run the python executable (the one that was just built) as a part of the build process. This obviously causes problem when you've compiled an ARM version of Python on your x86 desktop. Because Scratchbox uses emulation, it (and you) can run your ARM binaries on your desktop system (inside the scratchbox environment), that solves a ton of cross compilation issues.

ScratchBox was used for the now defunct Maemo operating system (running on ARM), but people have had success using it for Android:

If you go this route, let me know in the comment section. I have a scratchbox virtual machine sitting around for when I used to develop for Maemo. I am writing Android software now, so I have some personal interest in getting scratchbox working for android.

Cross-compiling ltrace for arm-linux

3 Answers3