If I just want to use the gsl_histogram.h library from Gnu Scientific Library (GSL), can I copy it from an existing machine (Mac OS Snow Leopard) that has GSL installed to a different machine (Linux CentOS 5.7) that doesn't have GSL installed, and just use an #include <gls_histogram.h> statement in my c program? Would this work?
Or, do I have to go through the full install of GSL on the Linux box, even though I only need this one library?
Just copying a header gsl_histogram.h is not enough. Header states merely the interface that is exposed by this library. You would need to copy also binaries like *.so and *.a files, but it's hard to tell which ones to copy. So I think the you'd better just install it on your machine. It's pretty easy, just use this tutorial to find and install GSL package.
So there are surely a lot of libraries out there. However the particular one is Gnuplot. Using it you even do not need to compile the code, however you do need to read a bit of documentation. But luckily there is already a question about how to draw a histogram with Gnuplot on Stackoverflow: Histogram using gnuplot? It worth noting that Gnuplot is actually very powerful tool, so invested time into reading its documentation will certainly pay off.
You cannot copy libraries from OS and expect them to work unchanged.
OS X uses the Mach-O object file format while modern Linux systems use the ELF object file format. The usual ld.so(8) linker/loader will not know how to load the Mach-O format object files for your executable to execute. So you would need the Apple-provided ld.so(8) -- or whatever they call their loader. (It's been a while.)
Furthermore, the object files from OS X will be linked against the Apple-supplied libc, and require the corresponding symbols from the Apple-supplied library. You would also need to provide the Apple-provided libc on the Linux system. This C library would try to make system calls using the OS X system call numbers and calling conventions. I guarantee the system call numbers have changed and almost certainly calling conventions are different.
While the Linux kernel's binfmt_misc generic object loader can be used to teach the kernel how to load different object file formats, and the kernel's personality(2) system call can be used to select between different calling conventions, system call numbers, and so on, the amount of work required to make this work is nothing short of immense: the WINE Project has been working on exactly this issue (but with the Windows format COFF and supporting libraries) since 1993.
It would be easier to run:
apt-get install libgs0-dev
or whatever the equivalent is on your distribution of choice. If your distribution does not make it easily available, it would still be easier to compile and install the library by hand rather than try to make the OS X version work.
