embed lua runtime error: Symbol not found: _luaL_newstate

Question

my code

inline int DOFILE(string& filename) {

  printf("lua_open\n");
  /* initialize Lua */
  lua_State* L = lua_open();

  printf("lua_openlibs\n");
  /* load Lua base libraries */
  luaL_openlibs(L);

  printf("lua_dofile\n");
  /* run the script */
  int ret = luaL_dofile(L, filename.c_str());

  printf("lua_close\n");
  /* cleanup Lua */
  lua_close(L);

  return ret; 
}

compile options:

obj.cxxflags = ["-g", "-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64", "-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE", "-Wall", "-llua-5.1"]

also tried '-llua', '-llualib', all of them report warning

i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-g++-4.2: -llua-5.1: linker input file unused because linking not done

When I run, it report:

lua_open
dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _luaL_newstate
  Referenced from: /Users/gl/workspace/node-lua/build/Release/node_lua.node
  Expected in: flat namespace

dyld: Symbol not found: _luaL_newstate
  Referenced from: /Users/gl/workspace/node-lua/build/Release/node_lua.node
  Expected in: flat namespace

See this question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8552560/embedding-lua-in-c/8552620#8552620 — Basile Starynkevitch, Dec 18 '11 at 16:09
Does your build system have something like a `obj.ldflags` setting? If so, put the libraries there. — Mat, Dec 18 '11 at 16:10
@Mat I am not sure, actually I am a newb of c++, and I try to write a node-addon, using node-waf just waf. I'll google it. thanks. — guilin 桂林, Dec 18 '11 at 16:15
@Mat you are right, I use `obj.ldflags = ['-llua']` and it works, but I still don't know what happened and why it works. — guilin 桂林, Dec 18 '11 at 16:19

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '11 at 16:22

You should be using the obj.ldflags parameter for libraries.

The build tool you are using produces its binaries in two steps:

compile
link

The compile step uses the obj.cxxflags compiler flags. Libraries are not needed to compile, so passing linker flags (-lfoo) in there is no useful - the compiler doesn't use them at all (hence the warnings).

The link step should use both obj.cxxflags and obj.ldflags. (ld is the name of the linker.)

(It is not uncommon for very simple code to do both compiling and linking at the same time, e.g. with g++ -o thing thing.cpp -lpthread. But for larger builds, separating compiling and linking is usual.)

embed lua runtime error: Symbol not found: _luaL_newstate

1 Answers1